Sales data analysis is an important tool for understanding how your business is performing and forecasting future trends. By analyzing sales data, you can identify sales opportunities and threats in the market, optimize your sales strategies, and improve your bottom line.

In this article, we’ll discuss the process of sales data analysis and forecast future trends.

How to use sales data analysis

Cloud-based software makes it easy to manage sales. It allows you to use email marketing platforms, CRMs, and integration tools. This makes sales data accessible easily.

Any company that wants to make better business decisions must have sales data. Companies can unlock the potential of their sales data to achieve success by using insightful reporting tools.

Sales metrics can be overwhelming and confusing to understand. Understanding what they mean and how to use them is essential for any business.

What is sales data? A sales data definition

There are many metrics that can help you define sales data. However, it is important that they relate to your sales strategy.

This data can be collected using cloud CRM software. It is important to learn how to interpret the data to understand the implications and what you can improve.

It can be difficult to determine where to focus your sales efforts when you have so many sales data points. This is especially true if you also have time to sell. Do you need to monitor the time it takes to close deals or the engagement rate of automated email campaigns?

An analysis of your success rate or average deal size would be more beneficial to your sales forecast.

You can use the right sales analysis tools to get a wealth of information. This will enable you to spot trends and empower your team. It will also help you set better sales goals and forecasts for the rest.

Knowing which metrics to use and when is the key to success.

Key sales metrics

It is important to pay attention to the data that will give you the most value. Once you have incorporated sales data analysis into the pipeline, you can move on to metrics that address the unique challenges you face.

What metrics should you be paying attention to when starting your sales data analysis journey. Here’s our list:

You’ll be able to make positive changes in your sales process, have a better understanding about your sales pipeline, and have the data to back it all.

How do you collect sales data?

While a spreadsheet can help you to collect your sales data, a CRM platform with powerful insights features is better.

You will need a simple piece of software that gives you easy access to all your data, in order to manage the overwhelming amount of information about leads, deals, and communications.

Your team should be familiar with the tool, how it works, and can input the data needed after each interaction.

You’ll have a hard time finding useful data without a solid understanding of the components of a pipeline. Here are some sales funnel templates to help you get started

Sales pipeline and reporting templates to help you get organized

These are the main differences between a spreadsheet and a CRM.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are a great way to gather data. They’re free (Google Sheets or Open Office), provide a quick overview of your sales operations, and can be programmed to perform calculations automatically based on the input figures.

The downside? All data must be entered manually. You might consider moving to a CRM that automates data collection if you would prefer your team spend less time entering data and more time prioritizing the best leads.

This should not be a problem if you only deal with a few leads. However, you should be recording all interactions between your reps, your leads, and the spreadsheet. Every email, every cold call, every sales presentation, and every follow-up call are all recorded in the spreadsheet.

CRM

CRM software is a significant improvement over spreadsheet software in many ways. CRM software automatically records interactions between leads in your pipeline. This saves your team time and helps you keep track of all communications with your leads.

CRMs also offer mobile app features and third-party integrations that expand the scope of what can be measured.

Are your automated email campaigns a success? What was the average length of a successful cold calling versus one that failed? Where are your most successful leads coming from?

Your CRM can provide sales reports that will help you identify winning patterns and help you reproduce them to improve your sales results.

CRMs give you more control than spreadsheets over your data. CRMs will contain all the data you need in order to assess your sales process and identify any bottlenecks.

Whatever software you use to collect data, after a few weeks you will have a pool of sales data, data, and other information that can be accessed. The more data you have, it will be more accurate.

Now that you have recorded your sales data, what do you do?

We’ve already covered some of the more straightforward data. Now let’s examine how to analyze the sales data. This is a bit more difficult but well worth it.

Probability of sales

You can see at a glance how much revenue you could make from all leads in your pipeline if you have sales data on the likelihood of closing deals at each stage.

You can determine your chances of closing a sale by comparing your most successful deals with those you haven’t closed, and then determining when you lost them.

Once you have compiled your statistics, you can use them to determine how likely you are of converting a lead into a closed deal in each section.

If you have 30 cold-called leads in your pipeline and you close three deals from those leads, then you know that cold calling leads have a 10% chance to close. If you had five meetings lined up during the same week, two of which led to a closed deal, you’d know that you have a 40% chance to close once a lead reaches that stage.

This data will allow you to do a lot more with it. You can assign a deal price to your leads to estimate how much revenue you have in your pipeline, the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) for each, and how likely it is that leads will move from one stage to the next.

Sales forecast

A sales forecast can be a very useful tool for your team and the company as a whole. Every team’s budget is dependent on how much revenue you bring in.

You can make your sales forecast by simply using data from your likelihood of selling. However, this is only possible if you know that the conditions that will affect your team in the future are the same as the ones that are affecting them now.

To create a sales forecast, we recommend that you combine historical sales data with potential sales data. This will enable you to accurately forecast future revenue and adjust for market conditions.

Sales might rise depending on your industry. You can see if this is normal and if there have been any changes to your sales process using historical data from the previous year. Knowing the past will help predict and account for changes, which will enable you to make better forecasts and set realistic goals.

If your team has seen significant revenue growth, the old numbers may not apply. You will likely have to deal with more leads and may also be trying new sales structures or tools.

You’ll need to use data that you already have but also account for any other factors that could affect the numbers. The forecast will be affected by the uncertainty of the data.

However, you can improve accuracy by ensuring that your sales process remains robust and a strong selling guide regardless of changes in your team.

Perfecting your sales process

Your data will allow you to determine your sales potential and the amount of products you will sell. Now it’s time to turbocharge and optimize your sales process.

Effective sales data analysis will allow you to work smarter without having to work harder and longer. You’ll get better results and close more sales. The success your team is experiencing will make them happier and more motivated.

Identifying your bottlenecks

Let’s begin by doing a pipeline analysis. This is the best place to start, and you don’t have to change the behavior of your team to see where there are opportunities to improve.

First, look at your sales potential and how likely leads will move on from each stage in your pipeline. An analysis should reveal any problems in your sales process. You will lose more deals than you close.

However, you can identify the stages where there are a lot of leads dropping out of your pipeline to fix the problem.

Once you have identified the problem, you can simply look at the data in your pipeline to see what has prevented deals from moving on to the next stage.

Here’s an example.

If your reps follow up within one day of receiving your cold phone, your deals are more likely close. Sometimes, reps can take up to two days before following up. Once you have identified the problem, you can bring it up during a sales meeting.

A section on prompt follow-ups could be added to your sales training.

It is important that you track the length of each deal in your pipeline. You can improve your sales process if deals are being held up in one section. Maybe your team should send more follow-up email. Perhaps they are sending too many.

You might be able to offer additional value to customers in order to keep them on your radar. These cases will all require data to prove the reason.

Once you have the correct sales data, you can eliminate any bottlenecks.

Utilizing sales activities

It’s time to make some changes in your sales process. These powerful sales activities will increase your sales and improve data quality.

These are steps you can take to improve your sales activities based on your data.

Lead generation

• Ask customers who have had positive selling experiences to refer you on social media to see if it can increase leads. The best endorsement of a product is often word of mouth. You can use your CRM data to identify your top customers and reach out for testimonials.
• You must qualify your leads in order to determine which ones are worthy of your highest priority. You should assess if they have the financial and power to purchase the full version of your product. Then, you should go after them based on how the lead was generated.

You’ll be able to determine how best to allocate resources if there is a pattern between where leads are coming from and the likelihood of a sales, or how long a deal has been in the pipeline.

Cold leads

• The more you keep the call going, the better your chances of getting a meeting. If you notice a pattern in cold calling that is not converting sales, then work with your team on strategies to extend calls.

Building relationships between leads and clients

• Helping clients and leads to build relationships is one of the best ways of improving your business. Implement strategies at key points in your pipeline, then review your data to determine how likely prospects are that they will move on to the next stage.
• To test if personalized emails increase open and click-through rates, you can use A/B testing. These tactics can increase the likelihood of deals moving through your pipeline.

• It is important to build client relationships as repeat customers spend 67% less than new clients. Social media allows you to interact with clients, keep them updated about your products, and create an automated marketing campaign that sends useful information to your existing clients. This will allow you see which campaigns triggered them to reenter your CRM pipeline and also provide data on the total revenue generated from new clients versus existing clients.

Try out your communication

• Email templates are an important part of any pipeline, and should be tailored to fit the various stages of your sales process. By asking yourself what you want from each template and what information is needed, you can create more effective emails that will help move leads through your pipeline. A/B testing different approaches can help you find the best way to reach your leads, and you should always look at how your emails are being received by your CRM and the time it takes your reps to send them.

• You can find better times to call or email leads by reaching out at different times throughout the week or during the day. It’s easy to determine if there is a positive effect by comparing how many calls were made and how many emails were sent to each lead.

Extra CRM functionality

• Automated alerts can be used to remind you to follow up with leads. CRMs have prioritized follow ups that increase lead retention and keep prospects warm.
• Smart Contact Data is a specialized tool that allows you to quickly build personal relationships and will allow you to analyze your success rates in communicating with leads.

• You might have noticed that your reps lose more leads at the presentation stage because they are unable to find time for meetings. Your CRM can be used for reducing the time and effort involved in setting up meetings with clients. Pipedrive’s Scheduler lets you empower your leads to pick the best time for them.

• Analyzing how many leads go on to product demonstrations and how many close can help you determine if streamlining increases conversion rates.

There are four areas that can be broken down into sales activities:

1. Approaching
2. Building Relationships

3. Demonstrate your worth to prospects

4. Closing

Your data can be used to improve each activity, and they will start feeding back into your data. The more complex your process is, the more data you will need to refine it.

Staff reporting

Daily, weekly, or monthly reports allow you to keep in touch with your team frequently. Each report has a unique function.

• Daily Reports. This allows you to monitor sales efforts (calls made, leads generated, etc.). This is used to monitor sales efforts (calls made, leads generated etc.) and to ensure that they are meeting their targets. You shouldn’t micromanage your reps.
• Weekly Reports. Discuss your team’s progress with your sales leaders. This meeting is not about focusing solely on individual sales performance. This meeting allows you to identify and fix any issues.
• It allows reps to review their sales performance and share their opinions on how the sales process works.
• Monthly Reports. A macro view of your sales pipeline. This report will give you information about your conversion rate, team performance, as well as the likelihood of sales.
• Annual reports. These reports are useful not only for your staff but also for all stakeholders of your business.

This will give you a better understanding of all aspects your data. Regularly, you’ll be looking at how your data affects your sales. This will give you a better understanding of what needs to be done.

How to present your data using dashboards

You are able to gather data and know the best ways to improve your process. Now it’s time to share your vision and knowledge with others. Your team must know your expectations and why things need changing.

Your projected sales revenue and reasons for not meeting it are important to the higher-ups. You should also be monitoring your KPIs.

First, you must gather the right data. Having a report slide filled with charts and numbers is confusing and ineffective. Be careful about the analytics you choose. Your data should be presented as a story. Tell a story about your data that leads to the conclusion you desire.

Consider who you are presenting to. While the marketing team will be more interested in how many leads they have become customers, the CFO will be more interested about sales revenue.

Next, you will need a program that can put together your data and sales metrics.

If you have more data than a simple spreadsheet can track, you will need something more robust and flexible to help you keep your statistics in check.

Pipedrive allows you to create and share sales dashboards that can include many metrics.

You can track data in real time across multiple dashboards so you can have presentations ready for when the need arises. Once you have set the parameters for each dashboard, you can see at a glance if your team is meeting its goals.

How to analyze sales data

Sales success is much more possible and more easily quantifiable if you have the right data. It is as easy as learning how to analyze the data.

How to analyze sales data

• Identify the key metrics that you need in sales, such as win rate or average deal size.
• Pipedrive’s CRM is a tool that allows you to track the data as leads move through your pipeline.
• This data can be saved in visual dashboards
• To monitor sales revenue growth and trouble areas, compare the data to historical averages.

You can get sales data by simply tracking your activities well. It will transform your sales process by allowing you to use it to the fullest extent. This will result in better lead generation, client engagement, retention, and ultimately more sales.

Combining the sales activities we’ve looked at, you’ll get a sales cycle that provides refined data and reveals how you can save money and time.

Analyzing your data is not a one-time activity. It’s a continuous process. Sales is a dynamic industry that can’t be stopped. You’ll want your team to have the best chance of beating the competition.

Ready to Perform a Sales Data Analysis?

Similar sales opportunities and insights are hidden in your own data. They are just waiting for someone to unlock them. 

What do you think? Did our sample sales data analysis shed some light on the matter? What other ways can you analyze the same data to gain insights? What have you done to find insights in your corporate data? 

Conclusion

Sales data analysis is a valuable tool for understanding how your business is performing and forecasting future trends. By analyzing sales data, you can identify opportunities and threats in the market, optimize your sales strategies, and improve your bottom line.