Today, we aren’t going to discuss what the sales analytics software can do daily.
We are here for a more gravitating discussion–a new game plan for staying ahead of the competition.
Wouldn’t you like that?
Of course, you do.
The actual question is, how do you stay ahead of the competition with the help of sales analytics?
You do that by considering trends that’ll come alive in 2025 and 2030—feeling confused?
Well, let’s get you started on the right track.
PS: Wondering why the discussion begins with what is sales analytics software? Come on, don’t be selfish! Think about the newcomers too. Seasoned sales guys, you can skip/scroll to the good part.
What is a Sales Analytics Software?
Sales analytics software supports collecting data and the creation of sales insights from a range of sales activities. Metrics from an analytics tool helps in determining the previous customers and lead behavior to forecast future sales and business opportunities.
Related: Want to set better sales goals using sales analytics?
A typical sales analytics tool extracts data from different sources of truth– sales technology stack– and analyzes. The analyzed data is presented in the form of revenue intelligence, and customer intelligence insights and reported on a sophisticated Dashboard.
Moreover, the sales analytics dashboard plays an essential role in identifying bottlenecks, risks, threats, and issues.
Having said that, we clearly don’t want to discuss the common reasons companies choose sales analytics software. There’s a way bigger purpose for writing this article.
Whether you’re a user or not a user of a sales analytics tool, this article will change your perception of the sales software.
Leveraging sales analytics software, we want you to stay ahead of the game–stay ahead of market trends and predictions that may occur 3 to 5 years from now.
What do you think about that?
Research companies have done the homework; all you need to do is implement and track the right metrics to stay ahead of the competition.
Let’s deep dive and see a few market predictions you can chase with sales analytics software:
What are the 7 market predictions you can stay ahead of using Sales analytics tools and metrics?
1. Break up with poor-fit customers
Gartner predicts- By 2025, 75% of companies will “break up” with poor-fit customers as the cost of retaining them eclipses good-fit customer acquisition costs.
The cost of retaining a few customers can be higher than acquiring new customers. Holding onto customers who aren’t exhibiting signals of fresh business or higher value business isn’t worth the company’s resources.
Unless you tap into the company's sales analytics reports and track customer behavior, it’s hard to understand which customers are worth retaining and which customers to let go.
2. Filter the lonely customers
Gartner says- By 2026, 75% of customers who call customer service and support organizations will do so out of loneliness, not because they have a customer service issue.
Migrating clients to self-service portals won’t be easy.
While you get busy creating more self-service channels for customers, they’ll get busy calling customer service agents to resolve issues, regardless of how excellent the self-service portal is.
Don’t get carried away in developing the new convenient portals and channels for clients. Get busy reading sentiment analysis to identify customers who call because they are lonely.
Using the free indications from the sales analytics tool, start coaching reps on filtering customers who use service interactions for emotional support and socialization and not for solving actual issues.
3.Allow sales reps to spend more time on LinkedIn than selling
Forbes reports, In 2025, it’s expected that sales agents will be measured on how they influence accounts via social selling, social interaction, and pushing of content.
Social selling will become a serious business and an integral component of the sellers’ day-to-day job.
B2B marketing and inside sales will continue to use various touchpoints to close deals and use social media to impart a greater influence on customers' purchasing decisions.
If you read your sales reporting software, you may identify social selling impacting the sales metrics to a certain extent. With that proof in hand, you must start exploiting the power of social platforms like LinkedIn and Reddit starting today.
4. Get rid of repetitive and manual tasks.
Forbes states that- In 2025, I believe machine learning and AI will empower the interactions between customers and inside sales teams to be more effective and lead to high conversion rates when multichannel connections are implemented.
Sales automation has entered several industries and sales teams as we speak. But future predictions press on AI and ML in both sales and customer interaction channels.
Machine learning and AI is going to impact the sales force. Sales teams will be able to automate simple and repetitive everyday tasks–making the process more efficient.
Sales reports suggest a great deal of time is spent on non-selling tasks due to manual and repetitive tasks piling around, for instance, making notes, data entry into CRM, writing back to general emails, etc.
If you identify any non-revenue generating task such as making notes hampering your rep’s focus during sales calls, replace it immediately with a call recording software that’s capable of making transcriptions.
5. Anticipate problems before the customer anticipates them.
Vodafone states- The best customer experience is when businesses anticipate what customers need and provide it before they ask. Between now and 2025, this pre-emptive customer experience management trend will accelerate and evolve, rapidly becoming the norm.
Anticipating problems before they happen can be your weapon to create WOW moments for your customers. New advancing technology will create tracking points that make pre-emptive measures a reality.
However, today’s sales analytics tools are getting sophisticated to give similar cues and support your follow-up conversations and customer service processes.
Related: 10 Effortless Customer Service FREE TRICKS for Prospects
6. Keep your customers closer than your prospects.
McKinsey reports that consumers intend to continue these new habits after pandemic restrictions ease. 80 percent of consumers plan to continue using private labels, and almost as many intend to continue using new brands (73%) and new retailers (79%).
The pandemic trends have revealed several cases of customers switching brands, which will likely repeat in the future. Expecting dedicated brand loyalty like before will not help.
As reported by Forrester, a few companies are increasing retention marketing budgets by almost 30%.
Unless you start observing your customer’s behavior carefully, you’ll not be able to predict which customers may leave your brand. And retention plans must begin now, not when the trend gets serious.
7. Fear of automation in customer
PwC reports that 60% of people are worried about automation putting many jobs at risk.
How much ever we try, we can’t rule out the growing concern in people about losing jobs and getting replaced by automation tools.
The fear is genuine, and you, as salespeople, must see the cues coming from prospects. When you see resistance from prospects, you must check for concerns like fear of adoption.
Automation may replace a few routine jobs, making daily work easier and more productive. While automation may eliminate manual chores, it’ll make more time for selling strategies.
Think of an egg boiler. It boils the egg, but it doesn’t tell you what ingredients go on top to spice up the taste. Which herbs go on the egg is what you must decide.
Expected And Common Benefits Of Sales Analytics Dashboard And Tool
We understand that the above list was an eye-opener, and tracking them now on sales reporting tools can work in your favor three years down the road.
But let’s not completely forget the daily help the sales analytics tool delivers.
You can take a glance at the benefits of a B2B sales analytics tool and sleep over it:
- Improved transparency and accessibility
- Forecast new and unidentified opportunities
- Invest in proactive selling, ditch reactive selling
- Monitor sales data in different ways
- Review and evaluate sales performance
- Identify bottlenecks and risks encountered by the sales team
- Solve pipeline issues faster
- Improve coaching effectiveness and training agenda
- Attend customer problems as soon as they arise
- Win deals quicker and more efficiently
- Identify customer problems
- Contribute in market research and customer intelligence
- Collaborate with other teams based on data.
Well, that’s all for today.
If you know any sales and customer-centric trends that sales analytics users can get help with, share them with us in the comments section.
Talking about trends, Would you like to know how you can sell faster in the new normal?- Check this out
And, don’t forget to start planning and researching the following best sales analytics tool for your sales meeting and conversation improvement
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