During our recent involvement with sales team, what we noticed is, “Are salespeople now thinking like scientists” A lot has changed, when I involved myself from 2013 in sales CRM software implementation, I see sales people are acting more like a scientist. Sales peoples are no more sales peoples, they talk technology, sell technology and dreaming technology.

During our recent interaction with SAP and HCI (Hyper Converged Infrastructure) team, both of the salespersons were quite conversant in technology and also in using it. They were even able to show some demo on their respective technology.

Now with the technology to back them up, the best salespeople are putting data first, details of clients, their requirement, technology availability etc.

In our business of real estate, our sales team is also talking technology when they are selling our business, flats, commercial tower, etc. Even they are talking like a “data scientist” with a totally data driven approach.

When I joined this company one year back, our sales team was working on some data points manually. After implementation of some CRM tool and BI tool, they are ready with their automated data requirement and we appreciate that our sales team is doing their work on data points solely.

“Sales organizations that are embracing the idea that “how you sell” is as important as “what you sell” are beginning to dominate their competition”

In my last job, our MD of that company believed in data solely and had created a team for data analysis, data strategy team, as he believed in data points. The importance of data has never been so clear. The digital age has given birth to both opportunities and challenges, and if you are in sales, you are probably in the midst of this transformation.

The internet has transformed the world into an interconnected entity, with trade largely defying borders and politics - Somebody sitting in London calling through LinkedIn for our Mumbai Property. They are tracking our property digitally from London which they were interested on investing in. At the same time, the shift to digital only and hybrid business models gave rise to an unprecedented amount of data generated by users daily while they interact with brand’s websites, mobile apps, Facebook, LinkedIn and call centres.

Major Benefits if you know sales technology

The gap between early adopters of sales technology and those that still haven’t fully dove in is widening rapidly. I am already starting to see organizations get left behind. Sales organizations that are embracing the idea that “how you sell” is as important as “what you sell” are beginning to dominate their competition.

For example, a few organizations I spoke with are still finding contact information manually, some companies have all data online and they are using their digital platform. If the contacts are not available online, they are tracking their social media, etc. They are using a mixture of sales engagement platform and lines of code that crawl the web and embedded screenshots into a sequence of fully automated email campaigns. Sellers are only notified when a prospect shows some intent to purchase, called full automation of leads.

Yet data still matters, particularly in Sales and Marketing. These functions are at the core of every business. The typical business concern is geared towards reaching out to new customers, generating leads and converting them. Big data serve as the starting point in this regard. With a timely access to the right kind of metrics, businesses can shape their strategies based on a careful analysis of market trends.

Digital sales channels have been gaining in prominence over the past few years. Such data allow businesses to make far reaching strategic choices. In the example above, it is obvious that with the world moving towards the overwhelming adoption of online shopping, the internet is where all brands are intending to penetrate in today’s cut throat market. Even in real estate business, customers comes online on several online portals in India.

Data Collection is a Typical Task in India for sales people

For real estate business data collection or some prospects, leads collection is very typical in India. What Indian companies are doing is they purchase data from market, either from naukri.com or some other portals, so as to collect data and do cold calling, and also collecting technological data by attending several technology events in India. For most people, data collection tends to be a one off process that is soon forgotten following the accomplishment of a particular set of goals. Data scientists, on the other hand, know that data collection is an ongoing quest that aims to find the most useful insights. That is the major reason why all salespeople should start thinking like data scientists.

In India, some companies doing market research for the collection of data, the importance of data are not limited to the identification of market opportunities. What you do after launching your products or services often has an equally important impact on the trajectory of our business. The next step in the process of beginning to think along the lines of a data scientist involves using the metrics that are collected on an ongoing basis as a measure of your progress.

Even after every launch or every event, companies are tracking investment, how much invested and how much business comes.

Ongoing market research in your product or service category helps to identify threats as well opportunities to tap.

Overall, we can say that there is no doubt that the sales technology landscape is crowded. Large organizations might work with 3 to 4 different sales technology vendors all serving different functions of their sales process. For years, it has been difficult to bring data from all these systems together and make a proper sense of it.

Despite feeling like I was walking through the future of sales, those who were quick to begin using new AI, ML, robotics and BOT, intent data, clever integrations, and focusing on the selling process to maximize efficiency are already on to the next best action.

Hence, we can say that “sales people are now thinking like scientists.”