Big Data: The Management Revolution (HBR)

  • Article

Sales leaders have never had a harder time finding sales growth, particularly in today’s market.  Why? 

  • Procurement departments are equipped with massive amounts of data about how you and your competition sell – and your pricing – to use against their suppliers during negotiations.
  • Out of a desire to deliver sales growth, your competition will do unnatural things to win business – and at any cost. 
  • Frontline salespeople do not have the relevant data they need to sell and negotiate more effectively, relying instead on gut instinct and experience.   

The result?  Sales leaders and their organizations are searching for tools and techniques that will give them a competitive selling advantage in this difficult environment.

Harvard Business Review published an article this month – Big Data:  The Management Revolution – that underscores the commanding power of today’s big data and its importance:  “… the big data of this revolution is far more powerful than the analytics that were used in the past.  We can measure and therefore manage more precisely than ever before.  We can make better predictions and smarter decisions. We can target more-effective interventions, and can do so in areas that so far have been dominated by gut and intuition rather than by data and rigor.” 

Big data applications for sales, like those provided by PROS and Microsoft, help sales leaders shift the odds back in their favor by providing the data sales teams need to sell and negotiate more effectively. For the first time, frontline salespeople are armed with analytics and recommendations targeted to their customers and markets that make them more effective sellers. The result: increased sales and outperformance on quotas. 

On October 16, Microsoft and PROS are hosting a live analyst presentation with Gartner analyst Patrick Stakenas titled “An Effective Sales Force Begins with the 8 Building Blocks of Sales Performance Management.” Stakenas will discuss the steps for optimizing your sales organization to create an outperforming sales team. 

We look forward to seeing you there!