The modern data opportunity – create a lasting impact for your sales team

Sales teams face ever-increasing pressure to improve productivity and conversions. Longer sales cycles and inefficient data management holds back salespeople from working with prospects and customers. Current research highlights that many teams spend 2 hours or less connecting with customers in an 8-hour day. If your team cannot access the right information when they need it, how can they quickly satisfy the needs of their customers?

Do you get value from your ERP data?

In a survey of nearly 1000 global businesses, BARC Research found those that use data-driven sales strategies increased profits by as much as 8%. They also reported a simultaneous reduction in overall operational costs by 10% after implementing a software solution that facilitated this strategy.

Using data to develop and inform your strategy is incredibly valuable. Without it, you are guiding your team or organisation in the dark.

Sales team leaders should understand data and develop data-driven sales strategies. However, when data sets are incomplete, stuck in silos, or out of date, the value and usefulness of data degrades. These data breakdowns occur when you are not working in a data-driven environment.

Creating a data-driven environment

An MYOB ERP system such as MYOB Advanced or MYOB Exo is an invaluable source of data for your organisation. It will collect information about the operations of every team in your organisation. But not every team might be in the best position to leverage this information and use it to make decisions.

Configuring your system to provide accessible analytics for your sales and marketing teams (for example) can be expensive or might rely on finance to extract static reports. This is slow and can leave teams without the information they really need.

A data analytics platform can empower your entire team with the data stored in your MYOB ERP system, without the cost of complex MYOB Exo customisations. As they only manage and visualise your data, licences to these analytics platforms require less investment than customised reporting in your MYOB ERP system. This creates the opportunity to get more eyes on the important information.

Creating a data-driven sales environment leads to data-driven actions. Team members can easily access data, analyse it, and confidently reach out to customers armed with accurate and useful information. Giving your team this information at their fingertips lets them drill deeper and determine the root causes of problems, like finding out why a product isn’t selling. Armed with the facts, you can resolve these issues, take advantage of new opportunities, and reduce lost sales and customer churn.

Monitor and drill down into lost sales

In tight economic times, organisations look to grow sales with loyal customers that they know and understand. Strategies shift to focus on retention, cross-sell, and up-sell opportunities. However, a sales team needs to have a detailed understanding of their customer to achieve results with this strategy.

The benefits come from being able to clearly see customer buying patterns, and helping to optimise their decision-making for mutual benefit:

• If a customer is only buying one part of the product mix that suits their needs, you can step in and recommend additional options,
• If a customer is buying the mix most suited to their needs, you can explain the gaps and help them migrate to a better overall solution.

The above examples showcase lost sales opportunities. Drill into the underlying data to find opportunities lost by type of customer, sales region, or individual branch and draw inferences about what may be causing the lost sales. Let the expertise of your sales team guide your customers towards the best solution. If your team can create lasting benefit for your customers, long-term retention will naturally improve.

What impacts lost sales and lost customers?

Monitoring individual customer sales figures allows you to quickly spot any declines. Customers who are decreasing their purchasing volume or frequency, or those who have ceased buying altogether are risks that should be prioritised.

Once you have identified customers on the decline, the next step is to understand why. Several factors can contribute to lost sales:

• A highly targeted marketing campaign might be needed to support a product range,
• Your customer service may be lacking towards certain customer groups,
• A competitor may be offering the same product at a lower price, or
• Customers may not be aware of an entire product line,

Armed with the best data and information, your sales team can quickly intervene to resolve any problems before the customer is lost completely.

How does a business planning and analytics platform work?

Sales, Marketing, and Finance all need to work together to achieve success. But this is made more difficult when different departmental data is trapped in silos. Creating a single source of truth allows all teams to work with the same up-to-date data at the same time.

This is where a business planning and analytics platform can enhance your MYOB ERP data. It can house, consolidate, and automate finance, sales, and marketing information and make it visible for the whole team.

Steps to building a data analytics approach:

• Decide what needs to be included from your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, Customer Relationship management system (CRM), Google Analytics, and other sources, and
• Determine any business rules, workflows, and security and visibility requirements,

Having this information available securely in one place will allow you to create a data-driven sales strategy.

Make the best use of your data to grow sales

If you are searching for a way to increase sales, your first instinct might be to hire and onboard new salespeople. However, as the economy slows and organisations are forced to do more with less, it can be wise to investigate alternate strategies to grow sales. The data found in your MYOB ERP system holds the key to unlocking the power of your sales team. But how do you leverage it in an accurate, actionable format? Watch the recording to find out more.

Kilimanjaro Consulting are the premier implementing partners of MYOB Advanced and MYOB Exo across Australia and New Zealand. We are the experts at integrating third-party solutions like Phocas into your MYOB ERP to improve efficiency. To start a conversation about how to use Phocas to improve data visibility across your organisation email sales@kilimanjaro-consulting.com, call 1300 857 464 (AU) or 0800 436 774 (NZ).