Businesses commonly turn to data analytics as a strategy for driving improvements to various aspects of their operations. Data analytics, however, is not a silver-bullet solution for improving sales performance. In fact, 84 percent of sales leaders say that sales analytics has had less of an influence on sales performance than they expected, according to industry research by Gartner.
The problem is that data analytics can only be useful to a business when the business uses it to drive real-world decision-making. And the only way for a business to implement data-driven decision-making is to commit to continuously and critically studying sales and revenue data, looking for ways to extract actionable, relevant insights from it.
The most effective way for businesses to make decisions based on data is to prove out the value of their data via a high-profile use case. Territory planning is perhaps the most strategically important use case for data analytics. And the reason is simple: Territory assignments tend to be the focus of widespread scrutiny among sales teams. As a result, the data analytics that underlie territory decisions also tend to get scrutinized as sales reps examine the wisdom and fairness of every territory assignment. And, of course, there’s no better data for territory planning than RevOps data.
Read: 4 Ways to Put Your Customers at the Center of Territory Planning
Businesses can and should be leveraging this heightened interest to implement data-driven decision-making for territory planning. To ensure that a business effectively uses RevOps data to monitor and adjust territory planning decisions over time, here are four key strategies that businesses should consider implementing:
Automate Routine Data Analytics Processes
For businesses to be able to use data effectively in their territory planning decisions, data analytics needs to be readily accessible. And the only feasible way to ensure this accessibility is to automate the processes by which the analytics gets generated. Not only is manual data analysis time- and cost-intensive, but the task is also likely to fall by the wayside as soon as other competing priorities come up.
Ideally, businesses should invest in a single, unified platform that can automatically analyze data and serve it up to everyone across the organization in real time as territory planning decisions are being made. The best of these platforms can do much more than simply help with once-a-year territory assignments—they also can inform potential mid-year adjustments to territory assignments. Again, the fact that territory planning can be done mid-year is due to automation.
Track Brand Perception and Customer Feedback
Customers don’t provide feedback once a year. Thus, there’s no reason for businesses to only use customer feedback once a year to inform territory planning decisions. Businesses should not only be tracking the direct feedback that customers provide but also measuring how customers perceive the brand and what conversations they may be having online and on social media about the brand. When these customer insights are collected and presented from within a centralized platform, the business can efficiently use them at the moment territory planning decisions are being made. In other words, the business should be assigning and adjusting territories in real time, based on data analytics that may indicate changes in customer tastes, expectations, and/or financial abilities.
Enable Scenario Planning
Data analytics is so powerful that it can do more than simply interpret and make sense of data. It can also predict the future. Indeed, the best RevOps platforms are designed to enable scenario planning, where multiple potential scenarios are run with the goal of comparing and contrasting outcomes.
Scenario planning is particularly effective because it enables businesses to ask burning “What if?” questions. For example, if the business is considering adjusting headcount, account segment assignments, and/or quotas, a scenario planning analysis will enable the business to predict revenue outcomes based on implementing any combination of these adjustments. Importantly, scenario planning uses only a business’s own revenue data, which makes the predictions feel relevant and relatable—and thus paves the way for the business to make data-driven decision-making a centerpiece of territory planning.
Evaluate the Success of Adjustments
The stakes are high when a business makes any adjustments to its territory assignments. Thus, businesses should be monitoring these adjustments as soon as they’re made, with the goal of understanding how effective the adjustments ultimately are in achieving their intended goals. As with other territory-related data, sales reps and others are likely to take a great interest in this monitoring data—ensuring a central role for the data in territory planning.
Read: 4 Ways to Infuse Automation and AI Into Territory Planning
Territory planning is a powerful use case for proving out the value of data analytics and data-driven decision-making. To successfully implement RevOps data analytics, businesses should look for opportunities to automate analytics, start tracking brand perception and customer feedback, enable scenario planning, and continuously evaluate the success of territory adjustments.
