Today’s sales organizations produce enormous amounts of data – but as useful as that can be as a catalyst for smarter, more effective selling, it’s typically far too disorganized and decentralized to serve that purpose.

Indeed, making sense of all that data is a monumental task that too often ends in expensive and disappointing failures. The result? A lack of timely insights into sales performance, which leads to slow decision-making, costly implementation of incorrect strategies based on gut feelings rather than facts, lost opportunities, lower revenue, dwindling market share, and ultimately C-level and board dissatisfaction.

Today, untangling your data shouldn’t be this hard. Producing quality sales operations reporting and analysis shouldn’t require complex, time-consuming projects.  Why then are so many organizations having difficulty?

Read on to see how we helped a client see a 10% gain quarter over quarter.

In 2015, a Fortune 50 conglomerate approached us with a problem: they couldn’t untangle the mountain of data they had coming in from across the globe. All that information was stored in discrete, incompatible legacy systems – with this mess rather than a single, harmonized source of truth, this company was struggling to make payroll on time and see clearly into performance data.

Today, this company enjoys clean, consolidated data that’s available to users at the push of a button. Our client can add thousands of payees and process trillions of dollars’ worth of transactions easily in a code-free environment. Their sales operations team now manually processes 90% fewer transaction-level disputes, and the Center of Excellence we implemented lets them run data processes smoothly in locations around the world.

Here’s the payoff: with more accurate data and access to timely insights across the organization, the company has seen a 10% increase in quarter-over-quarter sales performance since 2015.

This is the kind of real impact that results from untangling your data. Clear, usable data enhances process efficiency, enables data-driven decisions, and increases sales.

So how can you make more money by understanding your SPM data?

Step 1: Let go of antiquated legacy systems

You may be accustomed to them, but they’re not working for you.

Legacy systems are a roadblock in the path of your organization’s growth. Changing them can be complicated and time-consuming, requiring buy-in from multiple stakeholders as well as investments in terms of both labor and capital. But when achievement of your sales goals is hanging in the balance, it pays to move aggressively and decisively.

Replace your outdated and inefficient legacy systems with automated processes that consolidate and harmonize data for you – freeing up resources to focus on executing your sales strategy. There’s no need to handle data sheets manually anymore; instead, a modern platform can process massive amounts of data from disparate sources without you getting bogged down in the details.

Step 2: Connect siloed, disparate data sources

Data comes in a variety of formats and syntaxes, and for most organizations, it’s stored in siloed, disparate repositories. Without connecting all those sources together, you won’t be able to draw accurate and timely insights from all that valuable data.

With fierce competition across industries, every sales organization is looking for an edge – and gathering your data into one single source of truth can be that edge. With access to technology that can integrate into your SPM platform and process huge amounts of data at lightning speed, you’ll be able to make timely, actionable insights readily available to everyone who needs them.

Step 3: Get insights from clean, untangled data

Once you’ve gathered all your data into a centralized location, it’s vital that you have easy access that permits you to glean those actionable insights from it. Clean, untangled data paints a clear picture of past and present performance, allowing you to model predictive scenarios for all aspects of sales.

It also offers a major boost to your salespeople in the field – giving them the information they need to seize high-potential opportunities and close deals more successfully.

Step 4: Access the resources and knowledge to unlock the power of data

Even the most powerful and resourceful companies can struggle with this aspect of sales operations; it simply isn’t in their wheelhouse. That’s where a reliable, experienced partner comes in.

The aforementioned Fortune 50 company tried to do it all on its own with an ad hoc system, but that approach didn’t work. An in-house system might work for small-scale operations, but global businesses with massive data streams need a dedicated platform that can integrate, process, and transform all that data into a usable form that boosts sales and revenue.

With our innovative technology and decades of combined experience in streamlining sales operations, we can help you convert your sales data challenges into sales opportunities.

Learn more about this success story and get in touch with us today to discover how we can help you harness the power of data to build enduring sales success.

Making quota is a constant concern in sales; in fact, studies have shown that only 65% of field sales reps are hitting their quotas. Sometimes, the solution to this problem isn’t there to be excavated from your quarterly reports; rather, it hinges on how your organization understands and defines one key concept: territory management.

As businesses acquire new customers and existing customers change their purchasing behaviors, sales organizations are under constant pressure to stay in top shape and adapt their territory plans. In fact, research published in the Harvard Business Review indicates that sales can increase by up to 7% purely through territory redesign.

However, manual territory administration and a related lack of foresight into sales results can prevent your business from reacting quickly to internal and external change. This can lead to multiple issues: inaccurate and inaccessible data, disruptive reassignments, low sales productivity, infighting, and turmoil.

When a global pharma company was struggling with those concerns, we developed a plan to update their territory alignments rapidly and get their sales organization back on track. Their story offers a perfect test case for transforming territory management to support your business goals.

1. Balance your workload

Although your sales department might be looking toward the future, territory plans are too often rooted in past results – resulting in overly standardized workload distribution and an inability to adapt to market forces.

That’s why it’s crucial to have a deep understanding of workload planning. This process can be aimed at maximizing short-term sales by focusing on the highest-performing territories, or it may look to build long-term customer life value by concentrating on existing customers, regardless of their locations.

The key is discovering the optimal sales effort for each account and maximizing sales calls for analyzing each territory’s output and potential in terms of revenue and profit margins over a longer period of time. Doing so can reveal surprising insights about all your territories, from the most fruitful to the laggards.

2. Go beyond geography

Whether you’re a rookie sales rep or an experienced executive, the first thing that the word “territories” brings to mind is a map. In fact, most articles with advice pertaining to territory management will start with and insist on the importance of geographic coverage. However, defining your territory plan strictly by geography is rarely sufficient.

For instance, the aforementioned client was organizing territories by the zip codes of target accounts – in this case, physicians that could prescribe their products. Yet target accounts are always subject to change – whether it’s doctors changing specializations, new doctors arriving, or existing ones moving to other territories.

Delays in updating the target list were causing misalignment and sparking disputes between reps, so the timeliness of that process was a major concern. That’s where we came in, automating the process of updating the list and accounting for key factors that help reps perform even when geographical data proves unreliable.

Accounting for variables such as customer count and mobility, demographics, and best-selling products can help you ensure that the territories with the greatest potential get sufficient coverage – and that sales leaders make good use of their time and skills.

3. Provide visibility

Our client’s reps were constantly requesting updated territory information, but the updating process was slow because it was based on emails and spreadsheets, which in turn required internal approvals.

To speed things up, we streamlined communication between sales reps and upper management through our territory communication reports and integrated platform, adding technical capabilities that provide further insights. Our intuitive mapping helps reps pinpoint their accounts quickly and gain a better understanding of their area of focus, and the choropleth features make it easy to visualize sales performance across territories. These powerful tools enable reps to identify low-performing territories rapidly and make better decisions when planning sales visits and calls.

4. Improve your business process

Efficient processes enable collaboration among salespeople and help them adapt to product strategy updates and other changes.

When you’re building and adjusting the territory process, the input provided by your field managers during the planning phase can prove invaluable. With that in mind, when working with our pharma client, we collected and centralized feedback, then sent consolidated reports to upper management through our embedded workflow engine. Thus, the resulting process was not a management decision, but rather the culmination of the entire sales organization’s efforts.

Following these four rules can help you improve your plan, but sales territory management is an ongoing process. Our Sales Territory Management cloud applications offer the ability to configure and manage complex territory requirements with ease, thanks to flexible business rules and workflows that support exceptions, splits, overlays, and much more.

That means your teams will be able to spend their time and energy doing what they do best: selling!