In 2021, data and analytics are at the top of the business agenda, becoming the most important strategic drivers for successful organizations (no matter if it’s a small business or a large corporation) and the most valuable business asset.
But without an appropriate data management system, this asset has no value. If the data is not available to you in time, or it is outdated, it is completely absent, or is inaccurate, then it has no sense using it.
These 7 tips will help you improve your data management strategy and start making better business decisions and understand your customers better — and therefore, increase your revenue.
1. It’s always about the tools
Using CRM and integrating additional tools with it will help your sales team get a single source of reliable data, save a huge amount of time on repetitive tasks, perform all critical actions (for example, sales calls, customer service calls, sales meetings, social interactions) most conveniently, and, in general, to do much more things faster!
It is also important to sync all the tools used by reps with your CRM.
Let’s take, for example, Salesforce, the most popular CRM, and one of those software tools, Salesforce Inbox. It’s an integrated Customer Relationship Management and email management suite that combines email and calendar with CRM for creating a seamless sales experience. Using this tool, you can surface all relevant Salesforce data on emails, quickly and accurately identifying opportunities, crafting perfect responses, creating opportunities, leads, and contacts right in your inbox.
This is a good tool, but some organizations may find its functionality quite poor. If you’re looking for something more advanced, check out Revenue Inbox, #1 Salesforce Inbox alternative (see here). It is a great enterprise-class yet intuitive plugin that integrates Outlook/Gmail with Salesforce. Let’s see why this soft is a better option than any other Salesforce alternative:
- synchronizing your contacts, calendars, tasks, and attachments based on your filters blacklists, and custom rules; allowing you to craft and link Salesforce custom objects to records.
- editing email data and saving it to Salesforce has never been so easy — log the selected email threads to Salesforce automatically; attaching files to emails from Salesforce, saving these attachments as well as .eml files to Salesforce.
- synchronizing your meeting attendees and appointments in two ways; delegating permissions to the calendar and managing the booking page; inserting Salesforce fields into event descriptions.
- customizing quick actions; importing & migrating together with limiting user access to mentioned options.
- provides cloud/ private server/ on-premises deployment, as well as a native mobile extension that flawlessly works within the Outlook mobile app (both Android and iOS).
2. Improve your research process
Remember that the more correctly you conduct your research, the higher-quality data you will get. Sometimes it’s worth improving the research process to get some of the hard-to-find industry data that no sales team can do without.
Start with the general, then go into the details. You must perfectly understand how to recognize potential data sources and be able to verify the information received so that the further process of its analysis and implementation is as effective as possible.
3. Collect as much data as possible
Save, analyze and use any customer data that matters, starting from the first sales calls and upgrade requests and ending at customer visits of exhibition stands. The more detailed your notes are, the better the CRM data you will get and the clearer the picture of customer intent will emerge. For more information about how to acquire data visit Datamam.
4. Save your time and money with a regular data audit
To avoid an increase in your bounce rate and the presence of incorrect contact information in your database, conduct a quarterly audit of your data. It will help you ensure that every byte of data is up to date.
Also, you should implement an effective lead rating system (for example, creating ratings from 1 to 3, using professional terminology, or even color coding). This will help the sales and marketing teams to prioritize customers correctly. This approach can quickly help improve the efficiency and productivity of your sales team.
5. Collaborate with other teams for increased business efficiency
When implementing CRM and related tools, sales teams should be given complete guidance on data management; the sales teams members, in turn, should share tips on how to best use the tools with each other.
A common system will make it easier for all existing and new sales team members to find new leads and maintain/continue relationships with existing ones.
6. Watch your sales process
Constantly and very carefully analyze your sales process using checkpoints at every stage; use tasks to define call scheduling and the activity of your customers. Find out what the most effective sales reps are doing and implement training practices for those reps whose performance leaves much to be desired.
7. Leverage business intelligence and dashboards for better sales forecasting
Dashboards are one of the best modern ways to give you a clear view of your sales funnel and leads.
For example, they can demonstrate where each sales rep is in the pipeline with his opportunities, which will make it possible to quickly determine which other potential opportunities may appear in the nearest future, and which opportunities can be closed today, which tasks or calls are needed first of all.
8. Make data protection and security your priority
This is extremely important to prevent the leakage of personal business data, as this can jeopardize the entire customer base of the company, and therefore its success. To avoid this, you should get an assessment on xsnet.com and get your data secured and productively managed.
This is especially true when it comes to General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR); it is crucial for every organization to follow all established data protection principles to ensure the privacy of its customers.
The use of reliable software products guarantees the security of your business data, and compliance with the GDPR and other rules when collecting data helps to further improve its protection. Designate data protection officers and ensure that every team that works with data understands how to properly manage it.
Also, you should take care of drawing up a clear plan of action that you will take in case a data leak does occur: this is not likely to happen if you use the most reliable software tools, but it is important to have a certain strategy for such a case!
