80% of sales organizations miss their sales forecasts by at least 25%. This, says Forbes contributor Gary Drenik, indicates that sales forecasting is essentially broken. The key to fixing it? Revenue intelligence.
Revenue intelligence is a revolutionary AI-driven process designed to help sales teams take the guesswork out of sales forecasting by providing them with real-time, actionable insights from every stage of the buyer’s journey. This is especially advantageous right now — a study conducted by Gartner shows that 80% of sales interactions between B2B sales teams and suppliers will happen almost exclusively through digital means in five years.
“Sales reps will need to embrace new tools and channels, as well as a new manner of engaging customers, matching their sales activity to their customers’ buying practices and information collecting needs,” says Cristina Gomez, managing vice president for the Gartner Sales Practice.
But, as a sales leader, how do you find the right revenue intelligence tools that will take your sales team to the next level? Here, we discuss some of the key features revenue teams should look out for, as well as what People.ai’s own analytical tools can do to improve your sales performance.
Revenue intelligence is a relatively new process that uses artificial intelligence to get a 360-degree view of your sales process.
With the power of revenue intelligence, revenue leaders can obtain real-time data and produce actionable insights from different customer-facing teams at once, and view them all from one “single source of truth”. Those AI-driven insights can then be used to aid in the creation of more scientific sales forecasts, help sales reps find risks in the sales pipeline, and allow B2C and B2B sales organizations to reach their quotas faster.
Revenue intelligence software works by capturing, gathering, synchronizing, and managing data across multiple customer-facing platforms and teams all at the same time. Thus, an AI-powered sales intelligence tool gives businesses the power to unify all their data without the need for manual entry — unlike with traditional CRMs, which often suffer from data silos.
Aside from automating and systematizing data collection and making crucial insights more accessible to all interested parties, revenue intelligence platforms allow businesses to make data-backed decisions from buyer and seller activity at every stage. This means you can fine tune every single part of the sales process, reduce your sales efforts, and maximize efficiency.
According to a report by Forrester, revenue intelligent organizations were “more likely to overperform on revenue” and “far more likely to significantly overperform” when compared to other types of organizations. In a nutshell, companies that leveraged data-driven insights were over 100% more likely to overperform on their goals than companies that didn’t have any kind of revenue operations system.
Additionally, sales professionals from revenue-intelligent companies were:
If you look at the revenue intelligence market size, you’ll see that it’s estimated to grow at an annual growth rate of 10.5% from 2020 to 2027. Businesses are seeing the potential of revenue intelligence to transform not only their businesses but entire industries.
Not sure if a revenue intelligence tool is what you need for your business? If you’ve ever found yourself bogged down by the following problems, then perhaps an AI-powered sales intelligence tool is right for you.
Not all revenue intelligence platforms are made the same. Here are some of the key features to look for as you narrow down your options:
One of the primary reasons businesses invest in revenue intelligence platforms is the potential for a robust and automated activity capture system. What this means is that the platform will reduce manual data entry to CRMs as much as possible and collect useful, actionable data from customer interactions.
Today, a good revenue intelligence platform should also have conversation intelligence capabilities. Conversational intelligence is a category of sales intelligence which entails gathering data-driven insights from sales conversations, including emails, phone calls, AE engagements and more.
It isn’t enough to have a system that collects all the data you need. Otherwise, you just have yourself an upgraded CRM. Instead, an effective revenue intelligence software platform should provide revenue analytics as much as it does data capture.
This means producing actionable intelligence that helps sales leaders make informed decisions and ultimately improve sales rep performance in the long run. In this age of data-driven decision making, sales teams and sales operations leaders can benefit greatly from sales intelligence solutions that can point out winning patterns and inflection points in a business’ sales cycle.
Data silos may not make or break businesses, but when left unaddressed, they can cost your team countless opportunities. According to Forbes, “the ability to view data, derive insights from it, and have one source of truth could be your advantage over competitors who are held back by silos and poor quality data.”
A good revenue intelligence platform helps companies eliminate data silos by capturing data across all functions and sales activities and making it available to everyone who needs it. Crucial, data-backed insights become accessible to multiple teams, ensuring that no team is left with outdated and irrelevant insights.
Before making any decisions on adopting a new platform, sales operations leaders should consider the following tips first:
Low adoption rates are one of the biggest reasons why CRM implementation fails. While revenue intelligence platforms are notably different from CRMs in that they eliminate the tediousness of manual data entry and lack of integrations that come with many CRMs, it’s still important to have everyone on your team on the same page when adopting a new platform.
If there are doubts among your sales reps, make sure to reiterate the benefits of making the shift, highlighting what each individual member and each team has to gain from integrating the power of AI into their work. Emphasize the improvements they could make in their performance with deeper insights and more detailed analytics and the time they could save with automation features.
As mentioned, each platform is built differently. Some products may not have the features and capabilities that you need to advance your business into the next level, while others may have far too many tools that your team probably won’t touch.
Ask about the built-in feature list, any add-ons you could pay extra for, and whether companies offer custom solutions outside of their usual offerings. The point is to give as many of your options a good spin before settling on a decision. This will save you time and money in the long run.
People.ai is a leader in revenue intelligence, having launched the industry’s first Revenue Intelligence System (RIS) powered by AI. Our RIS automatically captures real-time insights from customer and seller activity, eliminating manual processes and generating actionable data to improve performance and boost your bottom line.
Here’s what you can do with People.ai’s RIS:
Revenue intelligence platforms can be a valuable addition to any business. By understanding what these platforms do and how they can help your business, you can make an informed decision about which platform is best for your needs.
When making your decision, be sure to consider the key features of each platform and how they will benefit your specific business. Don’t forget to also ask the vendors questions about their products and services so that you can be sure they are a good fit for your company.
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