Lattice Engines, the provider of Large Data Sales, announced the results of an independent survey showing the importance of big data to drive sales growth. The survey, conducted in association with CSO Insights, looks at more than 200 corporate executives and sales professionals to shed light on the most critical challenges a sales organization has today, including the need to find new ways to manage and obtain fundamental knowledge from an exponentially growing amount of data available in internal, external and social networks.

Big Data has the potential

The report, “Why Big Data Should be a Big Deal for Sales,” estimated that 71 percent of organization expect big data to have a significant impact on their sales, while only 16 percent have big data strategies in place for sales.

The report notes that sales reps is using as many as 15 external and internal data sources including CRM systems, search engines, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter to stay abreast on customers and prospects.

“Companies have focused on giving reps insights and information about how to effectively go and engage prospects,” Jim Dickie, managing partner of CSO Insights says, “but I think that’s one of the things that came out of the study—and that’s that companies are beginning to understand that there’s a lot of information you can get on the Internet, it’s too much, it’s not filtered, and [they] don’t want to turn their salespeople into Google search experts.”

More than 89 percent of executives believe that sales reps miss opportunities because they cannot keep up with the information about customers and prospects.

Big data needs to be a big deal for sales as it has a lot of potential. The amount of prospect information out there today is a blessing and a curse for sales reps. For example, sales reps can gain insight into which clients to target, how to spend time and energy to drive success, or which offers would maximize the value for each customers, if they can manage to wrap their heads around all that data.

McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) came out with a study on big data and found that large pools of data are now being captured, stored, analyzed, and aggregated specifically for sales teams. The global CRM marketplace is estimated to have reached over $18 billion in annual revenue and the right implementation of a big data strategy can help business create an effective ecosystem of people, processes and technology.

Opportunities with Big Data

The CSO Insights report suggests that more than 80 percent of workers consider their CRM system ineffective in gathering information outside the company, and only 44 percent of them believe that it helps to effectively collect enough internal information. In total, 90 percent believe that technology to manage Big Data would be useful, save time and boost sales.

A large percentage of respondents said that combining all information in one place would help them covert more leads, margin of leads and shorten sell cycles.

“Using big data, you can write the rule that says, ‘Go on the Internet and anytime anybody posts earnings, go take these deals out of the report, run it against this algorithm, and if it fits certain criteria, send a message to this rep and tell him exactly what to say,’” explains Dickie. “This creates a whole dynamic of, ‘I’m calling somebody at the immediate time when they most likely want to talk to me.’”

Even without a big data strategy, companies that are aware of big data see increases in sales effectiveness and sales increase.

“Sales has more to gain from Big Data technology than perhaps any other part of an organization because the results directly impact the bottom line,” said Shashi Upadhyay, CEO of Lattice Engines. “The findings in this survey reflect what our customers are telling us: they are overwhelmed by information and existing technologies aren’t designed for the social and data-intensive world we do business in today.  World-class organizations are already taking advantage of Big Data technology to increase sales productivity and win more deals.”

Sales forces are comprised of diverse individuals and to be successful, big data must create customer-level discernment that is both valuable and understandable for sales persons. Big data information would then create an environment where sales leaders and managers can make the big decisions that enable sales team success.