The quarter is over, and your CRO just informs you that you missed your targets for revenue. Then in the same meeting, he tells you that the cost of your sales technology is going up again.
What’s going on? Why isn’t your technology making things easier to understand and take action, especially when costs are rising?
So many executives we talk to, struggle with these two things when it comes to their Salesforce.
First, getting good forecasting insights, and second, managing the cost of their instance.
Unchecked technology can set up a spiraling rising cost. Be consistent it all comes down to this… DATA QUALITY.
In this post, we will explore approaches to improving Salesforce data quality and get to know how they can complement each other for better outcomes. Maintaining accurate and consistent data in Salesforce is crucial for any business that relies on it for decision-making and analysis. Poor data quality can lead to flawed insights and misinformed actions, which can ultimately harm the bottom line.
You’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase, “garbage in, garbage out“ and this is universal truth with data.
In designing your technology for management to gather insights, the most commonly overlooked ingredient for its success is this – the frontline user experience.
The most accurate forecasting data will come from the “tracked” incremental actions your sales team initiates, and the only incentive your sales team had to accommodate you in this is through a mutually beneficial user experience.
At Bolt Today, we are working with a sales team on this very problem. An entire middle market sales team has a quote-to-cash lifecycle of less than a few days. What does that data tell us? That the sales team only enters the information for one of two reasons.
First, they just processed an order and didn’t do any selling. Second, they managed the quote process outside of the system and then uploaded it upon completion. Either way, management has little insight into what is moving down the pipeline.
There is a world of difference between a 60% confidence and an 85% confidence in your forecast.
In this scenario, there is both a data and management problem, but it can be solved with better data quality.
An outcome-based design of your architecture, what at Bolt Today we call “Actionable Dashboards,” will put the necessary data in front of each stakeholder consistently, giving you the insights needed to make better forecasts.
When the management layers have better insights, it removes the excuse to find reasons to avoid using the data. It also clarifies who in your management layers is driving things forward and who’s not.
It’s important to note that this design doesn’t start from the top, it starts in parallel with the outcome needs for the front line.
A front-line salesperson needs to have access to only a few things to truly move the ball and exceed their goals, but often the addition of management needs essentially crowds out the engagement of the salesperson by too many fields to fill out, multiple systems or tabs to work from, and does not give insights on how to move a deal forward.
Adding more fields to your Salesforce does not qualify as a defined sales ops process, and a mountain of data won’t equal good data.
The investment in a good outcome-based design will increase front-line adoption and help you handle the other side of the coin, which is managing the cost of your technology.
Tech stacks are like magnets for new technologies. Every leader wants to add to the pile of technologies to make their lives easier.
It’s a classic CTO balancing act, often inherited from the philosophies of previous IT leaders they are replacing.
Ultimately, this aggregates into tech debt, duplicate data, staffing bandwidth issues, implementation problems, and most of all, cost. Every technology is built to get more expensive over time.
It solves this in two ways. First, by telling you what data is critical at every level of engagement with the source of truth, showing you what you do and don’t need.
At Bolt Today, crafting architecture for our clients involves us performing a “tech stack rationalization” to justify each technology’s benefits. Secondly, good data quality sets the stage for scalability.
Data quality will act as a barometer for the stress growth can place on your architecture, so you can efficiently improve your tech stack without compromising your most valuable resource – your forecasts.
Reach out to us at Bolt Today and start a conversation on what you can do to improve your data quality and your Salesforce ROI through our unique methodology of Outcome-based design.