Instead of sales leader's creating growth strategies based on what they think is best, many are turning to a data driven approach. CRM tools have become the source of truth for understanding why companies are winning and losing. The problem is many do not realize their CRM data is biased.
Using biased data leads to less effective strategies and slows a company's growth. Two ways that CRM data is biased are first, the information is filtered through the sales executive and second, CRM data contains information gaps.
CRM software can be a great tool for implementing sales force automation and providing deal transparency to sales leaders. Since sales executives know that their leaders review the data they put into the CRM, they tend to filter it. The joke we often hear is if a sales executive wins, it's because of their superior skills and if they lose, it's because of pricing issues or solution problems.
In addition, CRM data is biased because it's incomplete. Several years ago, we worked with a large outsourcing company to demonstrate the value of a win loss analysis program. The objective of the project was to benchmark the amount of data gathered by a win loss program versus the win loss data in their CRM. As a company, they relied heavily on their CRM and their sales executives were very diligent in keeping the system up to date. The result... their CRM had only 40% of the intelligence we gathered in the win loss program.
This is why a rigorous win loss analysis program has the potential of increasing win rates up to 50% and sales revenue up to 30%. If you're interested in accelerating your sales performance, please check out www.solvescores.com or contact Erik at erik@solvescores.com to find out what we do that others don't.