May 23, 2022

Four Ways to Do Less and Achieve More with Data

Four Ways to Do Less and Achieve More with Data

Stephanie Madsen

Director, Product Marketing

People.ai

Stephanie Madsen
Four Ways to Do Less and Achieve More with Data

Today, it feels like we’re all trying to get the most out of every minute of every day. Walking the dog? Call a friend. Doing the dishes? Toss on a podcast. Driving? Dive into an audiobook. Multi-tasking at its finest!

But, when it comes to your work day, doing MORE isn’t always better. If you’re in sales or marketing and reading this you might be thinking, “no way!” as cliche phrases like, “more dials, more dollars” pop into your head.

Hint: There is a better way. Listen closely…In order to get the most out of every day, it’s easy. The answer: DO LESS. How exactly? Here are four ways to do less and achieve more with data.

1. Do Less, with Automated Activity Capture and Contact Creation

Today, sales reps are expected to input EVERY prospect and customer interaction into their CRM. That means every call, email, meeting, and contact engaged. Talk about a time suck! Not to mention the endless context switching necessary to do this. (Someone pinch me and wake me from this nightmare!)

With People.ai, you can say goodbye to manual data entry and hello to data automation! Imagine: minutes after completing a call, email, or meeting, a contact is created and an activity is auto logged in CRM to the correct account, opportunity, contact, and lead.

The benefit? Sales reps no longer have to break their flow, navigate their messy CRM, and input data manually – a workflow that typically takes up almost one-quarter of their week. Instead, they can continue to do what they were hired to do – sell! (Sounds dreamy, right?)

But the benefits go beyond a sales rep. Imagine being a sales leader with complete visibility into accounts and opportunities, forecasting with up-to-date data vs. word of mouth, improved internal communication and customer handoffs, and the list goes on (but we’ll save that for another blog post).

2. Do Less, by Engaging the Right Personas

Another cliche we’ve all heard is “spray and pray.” (If your skin just crawled – you’re not alone.) Instead of wasting your time engaging dozens of the wrong personas, People.ai can:

1) Validate the RIGHT personas it takes to get a deal done, and

2) Allow sales reps and frontline leaders to easily confirm you’re actively ENGAGING those personas across all opportunities from one single view.

With this increased focus, you can remove the distractions and only allocate your precious time towards personas that lead to closed-won business — all while shortening your sales cycle. Talk about a win, win.

Here, we see that Julie has done an excellent job engaging her two key personas at the Director + level on Home Depot and Phillips 66. But, oh no! She has engaged zero key personas at the Director + level for General Electric! This is a red flag that will need to be addressed in order to close.

3. Do Less, by Engaging the Right Accounts

Now that you know the right personas to engage, how about we shift our focus to the right accounts? Each year, most sales reps are handed a list of target accounts. But, out of the dozens (or perhaps even hundreds) of accounts, it’s difficult to determine where to begin.

Many of our customers leverage an intent solution like 6sense and marry this data alongside our AI-driven engagement score using our latest enhancement, Engagement Dashboards. Now, instead of engaging as many random accounts as possible, focus on a select few accounts – specifically, those expressing high intent. When you engage the RIGHT account at the RIGHT time, magic happens.

Greg’s done an excellent job engaging regularly with Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance and Dell Technologies, who are both currently expressing high intent. However, it looks like Greg doesn’t have the bandwidth to properly engage all six of his top accounts. If Greg (or another sales rep) doesn’t engage Centene quickly (who is expressing high intent), a competitor could swoop in!

4. Do Less, by Evaluating Time Spent

Did you know closed lost deals take 38% longer than closed won deals? Today, most sales organizations don’t have a clear understanding of exactly how much time their sellers are investing into an account or opportunity. Typically, the only number they can go off is how many days old an opportunity is. But if an opportunity is 151 days old, there’s no telling if your seller spent 10 hours or 100 hours on that $50K opportunity (possibly leading to more seller time spent than revenue gained). Until now, of course!

With People.ai, you’ll have complete visibility into time spent by account and opportunity. But that’s just the beginning! You can deeply understand time spent by activity type, with breakdowns between internal team members and external stakeholders. Now, with Engagement Dashboards and the ability to visualize time spent, you can easily determine when to walk away from an opportunity BEFORE entering the red.

Here you see a list of opportunities that are 151 + days old. As opportunities age, it’s important to ensure sales reps and overlays aren’t over-investing their time in deals that will never close. For example, while Apple has a large upsell on the table, now is a good time to evaluate how real that opportunity is before investing more key resources.

Get Ready to Do Less and Achieve More with Data

(::Pinch::) You’re not dreaming. It’s true – you can do less and achieve more by:

  • Enabling automated activity capture and contact creation
  • Engaging the right personas
  • Engaging the right accounts
  • Evaluating time spent

Time back isn’t the only benefit of doing less thanks to automation and increased focus. You’ll grow pipeline, shorten sales cycles, increase deal sizes, and increase your win rate.

Are you ready to do less? Consider this your sign! Book a custom demonstration to see the above (and much more) in action.

Learn all of the ways People.ai can  drive revenue growth for your business