If you're like most businesses, you're trying to get meaningful value from your CRM's sales data. Unfortunately, that meaningful data may not exist. Despite technological capabilities, individuals fail to enter the data necessary to power your sales organization, and your CRM cannot function without data.

Do you think your business is heading in the right direction?

Is your business currently where you wish to be, or are you looking for a better ROI?

As with everything in life, your business also needs to head in the desired direction; if not, you may get lost in the middle of nowhere. You can't go with guesswork or assumptions.

The chances are that way; you'd head nowhere.

Say your business were a car; the revenue intelligence tool would be its GPS, telling you when to turn, which path is best, and if there are any roadblocks ahead. 

Unfortunately, both businesses and customers suffer challenges in the absence of a solid, data-driven approach to gaining essential sales information. The quality and quantity of data used by your teams can influence the performance of your revenue teams.

Revenue Intelligence is a new way of doing business based on customer reality rather than opinions.

Before we can uncover the potential of revenue intelligence, let's cover the basics.

What is revenue intelligence? 

Revenue intelligence is the artificial intelligence-powered process of gathering and evaluating sales data. The purpose is to get critical insights into trends and performance to increase ROI.

Revenue intelligence, like GPS, uses AI to gather and analyze data, and it can bring a new degree of information for sales opportunities, performance, and efficiency within a sales team.

Revenue intelligence is driven by AI analyses data and discovers opportunities by gaining insights from customer interactions, CRM, and other resources. It's the key to every organization's growth. The best part is that revenue intelligence software record every interaction between your company and the customer.

Using revenue intelligence, sales teams may improve their efficiency and production by recognizing which prospects are most likely to close and who are there to waste time. Reps may also use revenue intelligence tools to assess which prospects are most likely to respond, when they will respond, and how they will respond.

How is revenue recorded?

Revenue is another term for money generated by a company's sales. Revenue is recorded most simply by multiplying the number of units sold by the selling price.

Drivers of revenue intelligence

Forrester has discovered that in the post-COVID era, selling has shifted to a digital experience. And as a result, the technological landscape has been rapidly expanding to capitalize on all of this new data to fulfill the rising customer demands. This trend necessitates using revenue intelligence software within organizations to generate improved sales performance and consistent revenue.

In each deal, it's critical to understand the prospects and your team players. It's crucial to determine whether more steps are necessary to seal the deal. Or when is it essential for you to intervene?

Consider the last time a deal went south. It was probably due to something you didn't notice. It appeared to be a decent agreement until a stakeholder wrecked it at the last minute. Or a customer said something in a meeting that should have raised eyebrows but went unnoticed.

As a business, you need to pay attention to all these factors; if not, you'll surely lose out. 

Here is where revenue intelligence software can help you out. 

How does revenue intelligence work?

Revenue Intelligence tools enable you to be proactive in every transaction by providing you with a platform to evaluate:

• Responses from the seller
• Opportunities squandered
• Customer concerns
• Additional resources 
• Action items, such as scheduling a meeting

Revenue intelligence software turns all raw data coming through your CRM into gold. Sales and revenue executives use visualizations and projections to evaluate business health, de-risk the pipeline, and make realistic forecasts.

For sellers, this includes advice at every stage of the transaction – who to contact, what to say, and what to sell.

It's similar to having a data scientist at each sales representative's workstation.

Every organization uniquely collects revenue intelligence. Revenue intelligence software assists you in moving from data to insights.

And the best way to measure the effect of this data is through metrics and KPIs.

To motivate your teams to perform and your revenue to increase, you'll need to bring previously unseen data to light, such as how many sales your reps are completing (and what sort), how quickly they're closing them, and what goods they're selling. And you can do this with the help of revenue intelligence tools. 

Why should you invest in revenue intelligence software?

Revenue intelligence software enables businesses to work smarter rather than harder.

It's all about getting the correct responses. How involved is your sales staff in this critical account? What competitors have been discussed in your previous meetings? Are the relevant executives already identified and aligned?

Successful sales businesses have already made investments in revenue intelligence software, which automates the collecting and analyzing CRM data. This includes information from sales calls, site analytics, opportunity data, and buyer mood signals. In other words, revenue intelligence platforms automate the aggregate expertise and insights of the platform's sellers.

By establishing a revenue intelligence solution backed by sophisticated technology sales, teams can obtain complete insight into the health of their pipeline and deliver accurate reporting of transactions and quotas. As a result, precise forecasting is enabled, and executives are empowered to establish new, dependable growth plans.

Features of revenue intelligence tools

1. Capturing data

Revenue Intelligence software integrates seamlessly with your cadence and automatically records all customer-facing conversations. However, it cannot record until you allow the revenue intelligence bot to join the call.

2. Transcribing data

The revenue intelligence tool transcribes the whole call when the recording is finished so that your seller may give your prospect their complete attention without worrying about taking notes.

3. Analyzing data

Do you believe that simply taking meeting notes is sufficient for revenue intelligence? This is where NLP and AI cognitive processes analyze the discussion for customer inquiries, actionable items, complaints, soft skills, and chances missed by the seller. And even highlights, so sales reps don't have to go through the chat again.

4. Customer insights delivered to their inbox

When the revenue intelligence software has finished evaluating the dialogue, it automatically sends the complete data set to your sales rep's mailbox. Don't worry. If it gets lost in the shuffle of their emails, they can always find the insights on the revenue intelligence platform.

5. Recording sales conversations

The platform collects and centralizes all conversation insights and recordings. And this helps you to be proactive in every client deal you make. This is possible because the software evaluates everything from the customer queries to missed opportunities. 

Benefits of revenue intelligence systems

As the art of selling evolves, so do the challenges of leading effective revenue teams.

Identifying a customer need, developing a product or service, and selling to those customers is no longer sufficient. Sales are more complicated than ever before.

Organizations must keep up with technological advances, transforming customer expectations, and any sales activity that affects the bottom line. However, this may be difficult, especially for teams lacking the necessary data.

1. Increased sales opportunities 

Salespersons are always looking for more information about their prospects and customers. However, outdated or incorrect facts might cloud their judgment. It's considerably more challenging if you're dealing with a restricted CRM.

Revenue intelligence software may provide insights into sales prospects, such as advanced purchase signals, forecasting information, and targeting data. With this information, sales representatives may better customize their interactions, prioritize leads, and increase sales 

2. Full journey visibility

Revenue intelligence software provides sales executives complete access to the larger picture.

Sales representatives wear several hats. For example, they may be entrusted with onboarding customers or providing customer help, and this eventually distracts them from their primary responsibility – selling.

How can sales representatives efficiently funnel down prospects? One method is to increase the transparency of customer interactions.

From marketing to customer service, each department can access and reference customer touchpoints, from phone calls to email conversations, in one familiar spot using a revenue intelligence platform. It removes the need to contact sales representatives to get "up to speed." This visibility can save time and reduce friction between departments.

And for sales and revenue executives, it's an accurate, real-time system of record and interaction, providing insight into your business's sales health. 

3. More predictability

Revenue intelligence is more than just a tool for collecting data. It provides past trends and assists you in making more accurate projections. It's no longer about being afraid of setting "too high" objectives and settling for a low number. You can build your processes and plans on the data that you receive.

By connecting sales, marketing, and customer teams around a shared goal of delivering customer lifetime value and a superior customer experience, revenue Intelligence software may you're your business generate more intelligent and accurate revenue projections.

4. Siloed data

Revenue intelligence tools consolidate data silos within organizations and store them in a centralized location. A significant source of frustration is a lack of synergy between sales and marketing tools and across teams. Revenue intelligence overcomes this challenge by automatically gathering, evaluating, and sharing data.

A revenue intelligence platform removes silos and acts as a single source of truth for your whole organization by gathering your data across departments and functions. With this reliable data, all employees utilize the same data sets to make proper decisions in the organization.

The information you want is immediately in front of you via a dashboard. A few mouse clicks replace the strain of digging into Excel, and the time from query to insight is reduced from minutes (if you're excellent with Excel) to a few seconds. Instead of doing time-consuming work, your energy and attention are focused on the analysis.

5. Increased productivity

While each salesperson has their workflow, they often share systems, procedures, and data with their team, which means revenue intelligence solutions may significantly impact overall productivity.

For example, sales reps assess which prospects are most likely to close and which are likely to waste their time. By using revenue intelligence software, sales reps can get a better forecast of which contacts are most likely to bite, which channels they'll, and when.

Additionally, revenue intelligence solutions eliminate the need for manual data entry, saving time and ensuring accurate reporting.

6.     Beat targets

For better or worse, it's what salespeople wake up wondering about: "Will I make my quarterly target?". You're seeking to assess if you're ahead of or behind your projected achievement and velocity. You're also concerned about assisting your salespeople who are lagging. Revenue intelligence software helps you answer these questions and act on what you've learned, allowing you to ditch the spreadsheets and breeze through your forecasting sessions.  

Importance of revenue intelligence for businesses

Revenue intelligence may appear overwhelming, but understanding how to use it may transform your business.

The first step is to have everyone on the same page within your sales team. They must understand the importance of revenue intelligence and how to include it into their workflow.

After that, sketch out your sales procedures and income streams. Determine the source of your data and its size. There are three significant areas where revenue intelligence can help your business become more efficient. 

1. Increase data

If you don't have revenue intelligence software, you must rely on what your CRM provides. This is limited data, and CRMs are fantastic at managing leads but not so good at extracting data from them. 

But why does that happen?

Your CRM and your website do not have a direct connection. As a result, activities done by a user or lead on your website will not be sent to your CRM.

This means you're missing out on information like:

• Lead source 
• Website pages visited
• Sessions, etc. 

You can help close this gap by using revenue intelligence tools. 

2. Get objective data

While CRMs help you obtain insights, how accurate are they? A lead may have seen your PPC ad, told your sales staff, and Google. Yet, your marketing team will have no idea how their sponsored advertising generates leads. There is no way to remedy this problem because your CRM and website are not connected. However, by employing revenue intelligence software, you'll better understand lead action and be able to make appropriate marketing decisions. 

3. Avoid outdated data

If you manually enter data on your leads and opportunities, the data will be outdated. A critical piece of information can assist your sales staff in closing leads. Furthermore, your marketing team will have data that they can utilize to refine campaigns and generate more sales. Neither of these objectives can be met without revenue intelligence.

Best revenue operations and intelligence practices

Here are a few recommended practices to consider as you examine the various revenue intelligence solutions.

• Ease of Use: 
  Make sure the revenue intelligence solution you give your staff is simple. Adoption rates will suffer if the solution is challenging to use, and your revenue intelligence endeavor will not get the anticipated results.

• Implementation: 
  You should consider how long it takes to implement any tool. Consider user training while determining the time to value.

• Integration: 
  Consider how your new revenue intelligence solution will integrate into your existing technological stack. How does it interact with the tools your team already employs to do their tasks? Is integration an out-of-the-box feature, or will it require customization? Being clear on these issues will assist you in selecting the best revenue intelligence solution for your company's needs.

Wrapping up,

Revenue intelligence is an essential tool for the different teams within your organization. Sales and marketing executives may utilize revenue intelligence to visualize past trends and forecast future growth. Sales representatives and customer executives use the same platform to understand the customer through data better, resulting in improved communication.

Revenue intelligence eliminates manual data entry and increases team efficiency since their activities are data-driven. As a result, precise reporting and forecasting, greater work quality, and constant growth are achieved.

Data collection is a field that's constantly evolving. By linking all parts of the business to revenue-generating activities, revenue intelligence may kick sales teams into high gear. The only remaining question is how your organization can incorporate revenue intelligence into its operations – and if you can do it on a company-wide scale.

Convin offers one of the best revenue intelligence platforms in the market.

Convin secures your whole company data by encrypting it before transferring and storing it in Convin's database. Calvin allows you to watch a lifetime of sales recordings in minutes and set up income-generating procedures to achieve your business objectives.