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6 Essentials of Data-Driven Selling

By: Lee Wilson

12/1/2008

Using data effectively can help you clone your best customers and uncover untapped market potential

The sales region had not made their number in three years. The state budget was in the tank-- again. The team was demoralized and feeling sorry for themselves and they were looking at another year of little or no commission. The competition wasn't fairing any better-- there was lots of company in this misery. What had I stepped into? I was the new regional vice president at this major publishing house and I had my work cut out for me.

6 Essentials of Data-Driven Selling DDS involves looking at the intersection of your customer history data, your territory structure, and market demographics to uncover untapped sales potential. A DDS approach helps find the ideal target market for every rep.

Fast forward to one year later: Almost every rep in the region made their number and three became top performers for the company. We also managed to grow top-line revenue with a team that was one third smaller. How did we overcome a down market and grow revenues while shrinking the team? We worked hard but we also worked smarter. One of the fundamental tools we used was data-driven selling (DDS). This was a new approach for a team that, for years, had focused on building strong relationships with key accounts and letting the market come to them.

DDS involves merging the data your company has on customers with market demographics to uncover untapped potential. If you are looking to grow revenues (and who isn't?), a DDS approach helps your team find the ideal target market for each rep.

Compared to the hand grenade toss of cold calling, data-driven selling is sniper fire

We talk a lot about datadriven decision making (DDDM) in education, which supports administrators and teachers to use data to identify schools' strengths and areas in need of improvement, so as to know where to put their attention to improve student outcomes. Think of DDS as playing the same function for sales reps. DDS can help identify the gaps in your market coverage and then allow the reps to play to their particular strengths in building new business.

I've worked for two major supplemental publishers with literally thousands of titles in their catalogs. When you run a report on product-level sales in each territory the 80/20 rule applies in spades-- out of thousands of products, each rep makes 80 percent of their number off 50 of them. The kicker is that each rep has a different 50. This was the real eye opener for me. Of course the same four to five products showed up on all the lists, but the other 45 were a unique mix for each rep.