Big Data coupled with predictive
technologies are now able to forecast what has not been possible up to
now: buyer intent. This should help reduce the gap between Sales teams’
need for customer leads generation and what their Marketing colleagues
currently actually deliver.
Companies in all sectors have been setting
higher revenue targets recently, but this optimism seems to have been
somewhat misplaced. In 2012, less than two thirds of all sales people
made their quotas and less than 57% of companies hit their targets. A
survey carried out by
CSO Insights,
a leading sales and marketing effectiveness research firm, among more
than 1,200 corporate and sales executives worldwide, has now shown that
using a combination of Big Data and predictive analytics to help firms
increase revenue could be the way to go. Using these technologies, firms
should manage to bridge the 70% lead generation gap between sales and
marketing, reckons CSO Insights. Progress has been made over the last
two years in aligning sales with marketing, but there’s still a long way
to go.
Barry Trailer,
co-founder of the research firm, believes that “Big Data has the
potential to begin closing this gap by providing Sales and Marketing
people with buying signals they may not even know exist.”
Predicting buyer intent
Predictive analytics technology, together with marketing automation,
enable data collection from both internal sources, such as CRM and
purchase history, and external sources, including social media. Once the
data has been analysed, firms can quickly predict which customers and
prospects have the greatest propensity to buy. Big Data therefore seems
to be a more promising tool than those which have been used so far by
companies’ Marketing departments. Survey results show that at a large
number of firms, despite investment in CRM, the Marketing department
supplies only 30% of the leads.
Shashi Upadhyay, CEO of
Lattice,
a US-based provider of predictive analytics tools, believes that “Big
Data and predictive analytics are the next frontier for marketing,” i.e.
these are the technologies which should be used when looking for new
prospects.
Quality and quantity of leads needs improvement
Some 65% of those surveyed identified new customer acquisition as
their top priority, yet 68% reported struggling to generate enough
leads. They blame Marketing for not providing enough quality leads
despite investments made in marketing tools and nearly half believe that
the quality and quantity of Marketing-generated leads needs
improvement. The study finds that “Sales reps at some organisations are
carrying out their own ‘rogue’ activities, including lead generation
with one-off email campaigns, building micro-sites and leading
webinars.” It’s no real surprise this is happening, because 42% of sales
reps feel they do not have the right information before making a call.
They therefore waste an estimated 20% of their time doing their own
research when they are supposed to be selling.
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