I spent most of last week in Boston at the Enterprise 2.0 conference, where I was honored to be the sales and marketing track chairman. Next year it will be called “E2 Social” and will bookend the other conference that has been held in Santa Clara, which will become known as “E2 Innovate.” There’s good symmetry here. I can’t think of another purely social show or one focused on innovation. Most shows today are vendor-sponsored, which is good but different.
The example company may have said they don't have any of the data I'm referring to but depending upon what is available it could be quite valuable even if its a point in time snapshot. Here are a few potential ways sales data can be useful even if old.
You can analyze customer demographics helping improve future marketing & sales efforts
You can determine seasonality trends - who is buying when?
You can determine customer purchase patterns - what happens after the first sale?
Depending on what fields were used you may also be able to trace the deal cycle from campaign to lead to opportunity to close. Understanding the conversion rates along the way is a key way to identify areas for improvement in the sales cycle.
A common challenge is lack of cross-functional context. IT may do a great job defining requirements for a project but without a deeper understanding of the business they may not be able to make suggestions that would provide greater benefit moving forward. At the same time, many salespeople see CRM as a burden and don't bother entering what could be valuable data limiting the potential value.
All that being said, if there's not a plan in place as to how to effectively use the data, you're right - its useless.
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With Data, Oldies Aren't Always Golden
Posted by: Denis Pombriant June 27, 2012 05:00 AMI spent most of last week in Boston at the Enterprise 2.0 conference, where I was honored to be the sales and marketing track chairman. Next year it will be called “E2 Social” and will bookend the other conference that has been held in Santa Clara, which will become known as “E2 Innovate.” There’s good symmetry here. I can’t think of another purely social show or one focused on innovation. Most shows today are vendor-sponsored, which is good but different.
You can analyze customer demographics helping improve future marketing & sales efforts
You can determine seasonality trends - who is buying when?
You can determine customer purchase patterns - what happens after the first sale?
Depending on what fields were used you may also be able to trace the deal cycle from campaign to lead to opportunity to close. Understanding the conversion rates along the way is a key way to identify areas for improvement in the sales cycle.
A common challenge is lack of cross-functional context. IT may do a great job defining requirements for a project but without a deeper understanding of the business they may not be able to make suggestions that would provide greater benefit moving forward. At the same time, many salespeople see CRM as a burden and don't bother entering what could be valuable data limiting the potential value.
All that being said, if there's not a plan in place as to how to effectively use the data, you're right - its useless.