How to Accelerate Pipeline Growth Using Strong Data

The following is a guest post from RingLead’s VP of Enterprise and Channel Sales John Kosturos.

Strong data is just as essential to salespeople for peak sales performance as the right gasoline is to an Indy car. Real time, clean, constantly-changing data will get you ahead of the curve so you can focus on success, instead of setbacks.

21% of B2B sales reps’ time is consumed doing research, the number one issue with CRM is consolidating customer data, and 75 phone numbers change every thirty minutes. (Sources: CIO Insights, Forrester Research, CustomerThink, Dun and Bradstreet)

The bottom line: It all comes down to the right data at the right moment. Here are five ways to grow your sales pipeline faster with quality data:

1. Work Smarter

If your sales reps are spending more time researching than selling, you’re going to lose revenue. At a recent Salesforce World Tour in New York, CareerBuilder shared that they were wasting four hours per sales rep per week because they didn’t have the resources to search information accurately. By having the right contact’s name, email address, title, etc., quickly and efficiently, reps can focus on their job.

2. Gain Competitive Intelligence

Quality data gives you access to information that goes beyond your customers. You’ll know more about your customers’ market, including prospect data, location data, future opportunities, competitive intelligence, etc.

3. Know Your Customers

Quality data ensures detailed, accurate analytics to understand many aspects of your business. This information could include customer spend, buyer personas, industry types, and more. This will help you determine the most profitable segments for better product development, stronger customer service, and new business opportunities.

4. Understand Your Sales Reps’ Performance

Do you know how your sales reps are performing? Setting your sales reps up for success starts with quality data. By understanding the number of leads they contact, how many deals they close, etc., you’ll be able to gauge their overall performance and hone in on the areas in need of improvement.

5. Ensure Accurate Sales Compensation

With bad data, you may not be compensating your sales reps adequately, which could lead to poor sales rep performance, low morale, difficulty hiring, and more. Bad data can also skew lead routing, causing leads to go to the wrong reps or to multiple reps, which makes it nearly impossible to compensate accurately. Make sure only clean data is going into your CRM, and existing CRM data is cleaned regularly. This will provide peace of mind as it ensures you’re working with the right data.

Learn more from John in the upcoming webinar, Sales Compensation: Tips and Tricks to Building a Powerful Plan, on August 16 at 2pm ET. Register here.