Sales data is critical for any business to track performance and grow. Yet many businesses still don't have a good handle on their sales data. 

According to a survey on discovering the challenges, needs, and opportunities that data management decision-makers face within their organizations in 2022, 76% of respondents said they found it difficult to understand their data.

Understanding and making sense of sales data is an essential first step in managing and using it properly. This often leads to mistakes that can cost the company dearly in terms of lost sales, customers, and revenue.

If your teams aren’t managing the sales data properly, it's time to make a change. Doing so can provide a real boost to your bottom line. There are a few key reasons why sales data management is so important. Sales data

• Provides valuable insights into customer trends and behavior
• Helps businesses make informed marketing and product decisions
• Can be used to predict future sales
• Can help businesses identify and correct forecasting errors and problems
• Can help businesses track sales metrics to achieve targets.

Mistakes in Sales Data Management

Sales data management is important for any business that wants to make the most of its data. By taking the time to ensure that sales data is accurate, complete, and up-to-date, businesses can avoid costly mistakes and reap many benefits that sales data can offer.

There are a few common mistakes that businesses make when it comes to sales data management.

Mistake #1 Not Tracking Sales Data

Predicting sales based on gut instinct is perhaps the most costly mistake a business can make. Part of the challenge in collecting and tracking data is that as companies grow, their data sources can expand. Multiple data sources can lead to a variety of issues, including inaccurate, incomplete, or duplicate data. If you don’t track sales data, you won’t be able to identify key industry trends, report sales progress, predict future sales, and target your marketing efforts effectively. As a result, you'll likely see your sales suffer.

Without a single pane of glass centralized system, data can get lost or siloed, making it difficult to get the insights you need. A good sales data management system should be able to collect and track all of your sales data — customer information, product details, prices, sellers’ performance, and more — from various sources.

Aviso’s AI engine can ingest historical and current data from several sources of customer interactions — email, phone, meeting schedulers, Zoom, Slack, CRM, tickets, etc. This helps generate actionable insights that show the full revenue story in one picture.

Mistake #2 Not Defining Data Ownership

One of the most common mistakes that businesses make is not defining data ownership — whether it’s fully owned by the organization or shared with third-party providers. Without clear data ownership, businesses will have difficulty maintaining control over their data. Data ownership is important to establish the responsibility and accountability for tracking, maintaining, and governing the data. This is especially critical for sales data because it consists of sensitive, customer information that poses enormous data governance and security challenges. 

A data warehouse is a perfect solution for organizations that want to take full ownership of their data. Cloud data warehouse platforms offer a central location for all your data and can store it in large amounts for different purposes.

Aviso integrates with Snowflake, a cloud data warehouse platform, to provide superior data protection and offers global data replication with quick access to your data.

Mistake #3 Not Keeping Track of Changes

Your data owners should make a note of any changes in your sales data. This includes changes in customers’ information, product price, or your products and services. Keeping track of these changes will help you keep your data up-to-date, accurately predict sales forecasts, analyze team performance, assess deal health, identify pipeline risks, etc.

This is where a time-series database becomes important to keep track of changes in variables over time. Aviso’s time-series database tracks changes in different data sets generated during a sales cycle, such as close date, stage, type, amount, etc., to predict the likelihood of winning a deal.

Mistake #4 Not Maintaining Data Quality

Data quality is vital for sales data management. Over time, your sales data will start to accumulate duplicates, outdated information, and other junk. It's important to periodically clean up your data to get rid of all the clutter. If your sales data is inaccurate or incomplete, so will your analysis. Make sure to cleanse and enrich your data regularly to get the most accurate picture of your sales and overall business. 

Data enrichment will connect the existing data points with other data sources like social media, and other third-party providers while also adding and cleaning the existing data points. Accurate data allows sales teams to better understand their customers’ needs, improve customer experience, and personalize sales efforts for prospects and customers.

Aviso’s data enrichment capabilities make it possible to save better-quality data in CRM by enhancing your contact data — identifying missing CRM contacts, adding/updating contact details, etc. With Aviso’s frequent data enrichment, you can be sure to remain on top of any changes happening in your CRM profiles.

Mistake #5 Relying on Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are fine for small businesses, but they quickly become cumbersome and error-prone as organizations grow. When sales data is spread across multiple spreadsheets, it creates data silos making it difficult to get a complete picture. Additionally, manual entry can lead to errors that can skew your data.

Filled with holes and clouded with human bias, these spreadsheet-based forecasts are fickle and costly. Moreover, managers must trust their sales team to consistently and competently clean up their data, which may not be feasible. 

Investing in a technology solution for sales data reporting and analytics leads to significant ROI for not just enterprise organizations but also small and mid-sized businesses. Aviso’s AI-guided selling addresses the issues of spreadsheet forecasting and acts as a catalyst for businesses to grow confidently. With our data-driven AI guidance, your sales teams can escape the risky business of spreadsheets, clearly discern the efficacy of their actions, and gain an in-depth understanding of deal closures.

Mistake #6 Not Integrating with Other Systems

Sales data should be integrated with other business systems, such as your CRM and accounting software. This way, you can get a complete picture of your business and make better decisions. Unifying data provides a complete, accurate, and secure view of what is going on in an organization by allowing the teams to execute more robust and detailed analyses. Along with a 360-degree view of business, it also helps teams enhance overall customer experience.

Aviso integrates its sales data with top-selling tools to provide sales teams with a unified view of their engagement through a range of technologies and help them sell better.

Mistake #7 Lacking Data Security and Governance System

Another mistake that businesses make is not implementing data security protocols. Data security and privacy are important to protect highly sensitive sales data, including your sales forecasting and customers’ data, from unauthorized access and misuse. 

Aviso is committed to protecting the customers’ data, safeguarding their privacy, and achieving compliance with industry-accepted general security and privacy standards and regulations.

We have robust measures to ensure that your data is secure and protected by employing frequent security scans, and penetration tests, and leveraging industry-standard technologies to ensure that our data is safe.

Conclusion

By avoiding these mistakes, businesses can improve their data management practices and achieve better outcomes. This will help you make better decisions about your business and keep track of your progress over time.

Furthermore, businesses will be more likely to comply with data regulations and laws by avoiding these mistakes.

Book a demo now to see how Aviso’s AI analyzes structured and unstructured data across the sales lifecycle to proactively provide insights that help enhance forecast accuracies, increase revenue, and win deals on time.