If you want to improve your sales development efforts, outdated manual methods won’t cut it. To stay competitive, you’ll need to leverage technology and data analytics to optimize your strategies.
With real-time insights, you can identify high-potential leads, streamline outreach and give your team a clear edge in today’s market. Below, 18 Forbes Business Council members share how they are using data and tech to elevate their sales development and why these strategies are essential to driving business growth.
1. Enhance The Post-Sales Period
One part of the sales process that is too often overlooked is the post-sales period. Sure, you’ve won over the client, but in B2B, if you rely on recurring revenue from the same customer, customer churn means you need to sell to two new clients to continue growing. Investing in a robust customer experience process helps you understand how well you are meeting clients’ needs and expectations and make meaningful changes. – Kári Thor R., Cliezen
2. Finetune The Sales Approach
I have seen an AI tool that helps salespeople create sales approaches for specific clients. This includes battle card development, customer profiles, role-playing for call preparation and knowledge base lookups to answer specific customer questions or objections during a call. This could dramatically shorten the time it takes for a rep to become effective. – Bryan Bechtoldt, SVA Consulting
3. Capture End-To-End Interactions
To enhance sales development efforts, data should be captured during all end-to-end interactions with customers, including on the website, CRM, customer journey, ads, sales calls and social media. These data analytics help majorly in understanding the breakdowns and gaps in the existing efforts and solving them to improve conversion rates and enhance sales development efforts. – Adhyan Mangal, Metadrob
4. Gain A Deeper Customer Understanding
To know how to talk to our customers, we need to understand who they are. Data analytics gives us insight into what problems they face, which allows us to cater our sales efforts accordingly. – Mark DeHaan, TenantCloud & Rentler
5. Optimize The Sales Team’s Overall Performance
As a business owner, always look for ways to improve your sales team’s performance and productivity. One way to achieve this is by leveraging sales tools, technology and data analytics. Make sure you choose the right CRM for your business. Utilize automation and AI and implement strong business intelligence, analytics and real-time reporting of key metrics and KPIs to optimize performance and drive revenue growth. – Iain De Havilland, NADclinic Group
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6. Foster Partnerships
We’re using data analytics to drive physician partnerships by leveraging NIH data around advanced cancer diagnoses in specific areas of the country and demonstrating the ROI of advanced cancer therapies. It’s great for the patients, and it helps physicians be on the cutting edge of cancer care. – Chad Ramos, Privado Health
7. Achieve Lead Enrichment And Automation
Consider trying new AI tools like Clay or 11x for lead enrichment and SDR automation. With new AI capabilities launching all the time, it’s not really a question of whether the tools will be helpful but how you’ll implement them to get the most use and gain a leg up on your competition. – Sylvia Ng, ReturnBear
8. Hit Sales Goals
Data analytics technology has helped us achieve our sales goals. We have relied heavily on the data to understand past achievements and lessons learned and to chart a new, deliberate course by measuring actual achievements against the expected. I recommend that business leaders embrace data analytics tech to ensure they do not shoot in the dark but are deliberate and ultimately impact business performance. – Onyekachi Ginger-Eke, Edutech Global
9. Improve Business Review Processes
Over the past three years, we’ve leveraged data and analytics from our CRM solution to streamline quarterly business reviews. This approach has yielded several key benefits, chiefly providing us with dependable data and empowering our sales teams to perform better by focusing on strategic activities rather than administrative tasks. The more effort spent on building relationships, the more we win. – Steve Niesman, NTT DATA Business Solutions
10. Drive Team Performance Through KPIs
Data is everything in sales. Another word for sales data is key performance indicator. Tracking your team’s performance based on math is the best, oldest and only way to be sure they are being effective. The data will show you where you need more training or more of a specific activity. – Joshua Steinberger, NextGen Restoration
11. Identify Gaps In Processes And Training
Generative AI tools, like Fathom, excel at identifying action items in sales calls, providing insights into customer concerns and unanswered questions. This helps train sales teams and refine customer-focused processes. I’d recommend other business leaders use this because analyzing qualitative data quickly offers crucial insights into pain points and customer behavior, which is essential for sales development. – Syed Ali, EZO
12. Learn And Predict Customer Behavior
We’re using data analytics to track customer behavior on our online portal, allowing us to understand our customers better. We’ve created a new way to do things in our industry, so we are focused on learning so that we can optimize our approach and pave the way. I recommend this to all business leaders because it helps you make informed decisions that directly impact growth and customer delivery. – Brandon Aversano, Alloy Market
13. Personalize The Customer Experience
Business leaders and sales teams should be leveraging data and AI to develop customer insights on an individual level, allowing them to provide personalized communications and product recommendations. Moving forward, this is not only going to be a best practice but also table stakes as more buyers expect their data to result in personalized sales experiences. – Nikolaus Kimla, Pipeliner CRM
14. Identify Patterns And Trends
Data and analytics can be very valuable for spotting trends and patterns, which can then be addressed in sales coaching conversations. You’re not studying analytics just for the sake of it, as managing purely to the numbers (“do more of X”) isn’t an effective strategy. Rather, they are indicators to help you understand what’s propelling your salespeople forward and what’s holding them back. – Mike Esterday, Integrity Solutions
15. Segment Audiences Based On Preferences
We use our CRM analytics to segment our audience and potential clients, tailoring outreach based on behavior and preferences. Do they interact more with our website, social media accounts, newsletters or videos? This approach increases engagement and conversion rates. – Anthony A. Luna, Coastline Equity Property Management
16. Increase Sales With Workflow Automation
Leverage workflow automation across multiple channels—LinkedIn, email and calls—to enhance sales development for a meeting rate that is nine times higher. Use data analytics for A/B testing ideal customer profiles to identify the most effective ones. Ensure a robust CRM system for detailed reporting and strategic decision making. Integrate the tech stack with back-office tools for seamless communication and scalable sales. – Besnik Vrellaku, Salesflow.io
17. Enhance Content Creation
We use generative AI to enhance proposal creation, email wordsmithing and negotiation strategies. AI crafts personalized, precise content that resonates with clients. As Steve Jobs once said, “We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts to be able to get the best of both.” We recommend this because AI elevates communication, making every interaction more compelling and strategic. – Ravi Panja, Soulax, Inc.
18. Target High-Potential Leads
We’re using predictive analytics to identify high-potential leads and tailor our outreach strategies. By analyzing past interactions and engagement patterns, we optimize our approach, increasing conversion rates and efficiency. I recommend this to other leaders because it focuses efforts on the most promising prospects, driving better results, saving time and maximizing ROI. – Kranti Ponnam, Kipi.bi
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