What Your Sales Team Needs To Know About Data Discovery

When it comes to the folks on your sales team, they are usually doing everything they can to find the best leads. Depending on their tenure and their approach to sales, it is likely they may not know a whole lot about data discovery. This isn’t meant as a dig in any way. But for many sales forces, the ‘hunch’, the ‘gut feeling’, and the ‘ol’ instinct’ still reign supreme when it comes to finding the perfect leads.

Time To Get With ‘It’

This may have worked well enough in the past. However, in this day and age, the sales game is all about data. Numbers don’t lie, and you can’t finesse your way around figures that don’t add up. Furthermore, sales teams are on very short leashes. They need to have results on a regular basis. Trying to stir up successful leads based on intuition alone isn’t going to cut it.

But there is a big problem here — departments tend to be quite disconnected from each other. Advertising and marketing teams are often doing their research, putting together and implementing strategies, and tweaking parameters as necessary based on results. Data is gathered about what audiences respond the best, as well as what materials connect the best. Further strategizing continues, along with data collection. But many companies make the mistake of keeping this data with only one department.

Sharing the Wealth

Data discovery is all about analyzing raw client/customer data to:

Get A Big Picture: Sales has the opportunity to step back and start looking for patterns in the numbers. The data collected is raw but still has plenty to offer because it is ripe for analysis.

Quality Information: As the data discovery process moves forward, categorization of the information starts to take shape. Areas where data is missing, invalid, or may require sampling due to the size of the data set are also beginning to take shape.

It’s here that data discovery really starts to show its positive impact on sales and why it is an invaluable resource for the sales team. The discovery process is extracting data from a number of areas specific to the client/customer. Data is also actively being ‘cleaned’ and made easier to read. With a more succinct batch of information as to what contacts will make for better leads, calls and visits made by the sales team are much more likely to yield far greater results than the guess work they once relied upon.

Don’t Settle for ‘Good Enough’…

But for many companies who invest in data discovery, they tend to love the idea that there is no elaborate modeling needed. Data tends to stands on its own. Furthermore, and this is a key point, information tends to be conveyed in ways that are easy to understand for all team members in a company. This means that every department can glean some important part of the data for their use (e.g., PPC strategy, development of advertising materials, branding) without having to work at cracking some unknown code. 

This, of course, is what makes MindEcology different. We are all about devouring data, but we do so much more. Data discovery with us is a multistep process that involves the following:

• data acquisition
• data description
• data quality assessment
• data preparation

There’s also our work with a relatively new branch of computer science known as data mining. It’s extra steps and expertise like this that make us stand out against the competition. Also, here at MindEcology, we want your company to stand out from other companies. Why stop the data discovery process before modeling? We take pride in and encourage our clients to go forward with our proven multi-tiered predictive modeling and model application process. We believe that your data wants to tell a story. Why not let us help you tell that story in its most complete form? 

Could data discovery be the missing piece of the puzzle for your company’s success? Call us here at MindEcology & find out today!