How can we use data more effectively in sales

Tony Hughes, CEO at Huthwaite, believes that data insights can enhance behaviour driven sales by doing the right things, at the right time, for the right people.  However, he is keen to emphasise that data insights aren't a shortcut to the skills required to create value within the sales process itself.

I just want to talk to you today a little bit about the use of data in sales. There’s no doubt that in the last 10 years the provision of data and particularly good analytics of data has made a massive improvement to people’s focus in sales.

But it comes with a health warning, and whilst data may give us a road map to tell us to which direction to go in, who to target, where to turn to, what it doesn’t do is enable us to navigate that road map. That needs skills, that needs the sales skills of people who can, in all but truly commodity sales, build value in the sales process.

So, data may mean that we waste less time identifying who we should talk to but it isn’t a shortcut to being able to sell and create value in that sales process for the buyers. And we need to be very careful that just that provision of information doesn’t mean people will be able to or want to buy your solutions.