Why Data Management is Essential for Sales Teams

When I was at a previous company, I received a phone call from our own sales team asking if I had heard of our product. I informed them both that I had and that I was down the hall from them.

Accidentally having a sales rep call someone within the company is funny, but it hints at deeply troubling data management issues. Who else might your team be calling that they shouldn’t be? There’s a lot of reasons why companies end up with databases filled with duplicates, errors, and unverified call lists.
 

But mastering data management is essential for sales teams to stay focused on selling.
 

Here’s why.

Your Data Tracks Your Successes and To-Dos

Data management can feel like homework. It’s not as fun for salespeople as having conversations and closing deals. But what happens when you don’t do your homework for weeks on end? Bad grades, poor test scores, and you don’t learn anything. The same is true in the sales world. Keep ignoring data entry and you’ll find yourself missing follow-ups, annoying current customers, and missing quota. Data-logging is needed for keeping track of what you’re doing and when you’re doing it because the activities you do today decide what you’ll need to do in the future.

Keep a good record of your conversations. You’ll know when you need to follow up with prospects and can be proud when the deal closes. Keeping track and staying focused is essential for keeping your team motivated.

Strategy Needs Accurate Data

Proper data management is important for more than just keeping track of what you should be doing each day. It informs your overall sales strategy. When you’re looking over accounts, planning new campaigns, or testing new sales techniques, your thinking will be wrong if it’s based on inaccurate data. Data informs decisions. You can’t tell if what you’re doing is working if you’re not tracking it or tracking it incorrectly. If you’re sending the same email over and over, but not keeping track of the open and click rates then you won’t know when you need to switch it up.

It’s also important to make sure you’re focusing on the right prospects. Without a proper data system, you can’t tell who is a qualified lead and what stage of your marketing/sales funnel a prospect is. Sales will have better success reaching out to leads that have already engaged with your brand and been qualified.

Managing Data Saves Time in the Long Run

Logging data and filling fields in Salesforce takes time, but it’s never as much time as you end up spending in the long run if you skip logging. Referring back to personal notes, missing follow-ups, figuring out who you’re supposed to be talking to, fixing and de-duping your data all take more time than it would have taken to do it right the first time.

Taking the time to put processes in place and improve your data quality will save you from having to fix your data down the road when the problem gets too bad to ignore. You can even use tools like DialSource to automatically log data and save your sales team the trouble.

Data management isn’t easy, but it’s what you need. Like exercise, it’s not the most enjoyable activity, but you’ll appreciate having done it.

Joshua Loomis is DialSource’s blog manager and sales strategy expert.