What is Sales Intelligence and How Can It Help You Sell More
Time is a sales rep’s most valuable asset. Every minute spent sifting through data, searching for insights, or generating reports is a minute lost that could be spent connecting with customers and closing deals. In a study by Aberdeen, they found that a sales rep on average is spending about 43 hours a month, just digging through reports and looking for information. That’s practically a whole workweek wasted on tasks that don’t directly contribute to revenue generation.
The reality is, many sales teams are drowning in data but starving for insights. They’re forced to rely on outdated reports, gut feelings, and a shotgun approach to outreach, hoping something sticks. But the market is competitive and even sometimes saturated, that approach simply isn’t enough.
What if, instead of getting bogged down in data analysis, your sales team could have instant access to the information they need to make every interaction count?
Enter Sales Intelligence.
What is Sales Intelligence?
Sales intelligence is all the information that sales reps need in order to make a sale. By integrating your CRM with your existing accounting systems and ERP, sales intelligence tools take all that raw data such as purchase history, interactions, and even market trends, and turn it into actionable insights that help them truly understand their customer’s needs, pain points, and buying behaviors and then using that knowledge to guide their sales strategy.
We recently hosted a webinar, “Find Your Organization’s Sales Forecasting Confidence,” where we explored the transformative power of sales intelligence. If you missed it (or just need a refresher), we break down the key takeaways below and show you how to leverage these powerful insights to dramatically improve your sales team’s performance.
How Sales Intelligence Can Help You Sell More
- Identify Upsell/Cross-sell Opportunities
Remember those “frequently bought together” suggestions you see on Amazon? That’s sales intelligence in action. By analyzing customer purchase history, sales intelligence tools can reveal hidden patterns and connections between products, allowing you to:
- Spot cross-selling opportunities and proactively suggest them to customers. For example, if a customer orders a large quantity of steel pipes, offer them the corresponding fittings or coatings they’ll likely need for their project.
- Determine upselling potential based on their order history. For instance, if a customer consistently orders small batches of a specific raw material, suggest a larger volume purchase at a discounted rate.
- Pinpoint instances where customers may have missed out on essential complementary products. Perhaps they ordered a pallet of engine blocks but not the necessary gaskets or seals. Sales intelligence can flag these missed opportunities, allowing your sales team to reach out with targeted offers and prevent costly production delays for the customer.
No more missed chances or leaving money on the table. You grab every opportunity to increase your sales numbers.
- Prioritize Accounts
Not all customers are created equal. Some contribute significantly more revenue than others, while some may have gone dormant. Sales intelligence can help you focus your efforts where they matter most by:
- Segmenting customers based on value. It analyzes purchase history, engagement levels, and other key metrics to categorize customers into different tiers (e.g., high-value, mid-value, low-value) so you can tailor your sales approach and allocate resources accordingly.
- Identifying high-potential accounts. Know who your most promising customers are and develop targeted strategies to nurture those relationships and maximize their lifetime value. This might involve personalized communication, exclusive offers, or proactive account management to ensure their needs are always met.
- Pinpointing inactive accounts. Sales intelligence can help you identify accounts that have become inactive and develop targeted campaigns like win-back offers or personalized emails to re-engage them.
- Targeted Communication
Sales and marketing have often relied on a shotgun approach to communication, blasting out generic messages to a broad audience and hoping for the best. With sales intelligence, you can ditch this and embrace a more sniper rifle kind of strategy, delivering the right message to the right customer at the right time.
By leveraging customer insights such as product preferences, past interactions, and even their position in the buying cycle, you can craft personalized messages that resonate with each customer. This level of personalization leads to higher engagement, stronger relationships, and more sales.
For example, if you know a customer has previously purchased a specific type of equipment, you can send them targeted emails about upgrades, maintenance services, or complementary products related to that purchase. This ensures that your communication is always relevant and valuable to the recipient, increasing the likelihood of a positive response.
- Data-Driven Sales Conversations:
Research by Gartner shows that sales reps only have about 5% of a customer’s buying time. You don’t have the luxury of winging it anymore. Every interaction needs to be laser-focused and impactful.
Sales intelligence equips your team to make those crucial conversations count by ditching the generic pitches and tailoring your approach to each customer. By understanding their purchase history and anticipating their needs, you can ensure you’re addressing what matters most to them. This means focusing on relevant products and solutions, avoiding wasted time on unproductive tangents, and getting to the heart of the matter quickly.
By demonstrating a deep understanding of their needs, you can build stronger relationships and establish yourself as a trusted partner.
- Proactive Account Management:
In sales, timing is everything. Knowing when a customer is ready to buy or at risk of churning can make all the difference. Sales intelligence tools act as an early warning system, allowing you to proactively manage your accounts and stay ahead of the curve. By configuring your platform to send automated alerts, you can monitor customer behavior and respond to key events in real-time.
For example, you can receive notifications about significant changes in purchase volume – sudden drops or spikes that signal a potential problem or opportunity. Or, get alerted when a customer hasn’t placed an order or interacted with your business in a while, so you can reach out and re-engage them before they slip away.
You can even customize the alert thresholds, defining the specific criteria that warrant your attention. If a customer’s order value decreases by more than 15% compared to the previous quarter, you’ll know instantly and can take action. This might involve reaching out to the customer, offering support, or adjusting your sales strategy to address their needs.
***
The future of sales is here, and it’s powered by AI. Sales intelligence tools like SugarCRM, with its powerful Sales-i capabilities, are transforming the way businesses sell. By harnessing the power of AI, you can equip your sales team with the insights they need to make every interaction count, personalize customer experiences, and drive revenue growth.
SugarCRM seamlessly integrates with over 200 different ERP and accounting systems, providing a comprehensive view of your customers and their buying behavior. This allows you to unlock the full potential of your data and make informed decisions that drive sales success.
Watch our on-demand webinar, “Find Your Organization’s Sales Forecasting Confidence,” to discover how SugarCRM and Sales-i can help you sell more and forecast with confidence. Click below to access the webinar now!