How to Improve Account Data in Salesforce to Excel at Territory Management
Sales teams are fighting an uphill battle. And it’s not because they don’t have the right skills, or the right customers, or the right tools. Oftentimes, it’s because they have the wrong data feeding into those tools and lack complete visibility into opportunities.
A survey by Gartner found that “organizations believe poor data quality to be responsible for an average of $15 million per year in losses.” Furthermore, over half of respondents report they don’t know the exact cost of bad data because they don’t measure it.
The difficult reality is that data decays rapidly. Estimates suggest it becomes outdated at a rate of 2% per month, which translates to 24% per year. Working with incomplete and outdated data makes it difficult for sales reps to reach their full potential. Additionally, they often lack visibility into all business opportunities, which can further hinder their success.
Why a 360-degree view isn’t “nice to have” … it’s essential for strategic selling
You might have sales reps working in different offices at different locations. And when one team closes a deal, it can positively affect the others — but only if the others know about it.
For example, perhaps you have a sales team working on an account in Germany. They successfully close a deal while, at the same time, the U.S. team is working to close a deal with a subsidiary of the parent company.
If the U.S. team doesn’t realize the German team just landed the parent account, they can’t leverage that success to grow the business. And that’s why complete visibility is so critical to territory management.
Growing visibility and pipeline potential
Sure, you need clean data to begin with, but you also need a way to fully understand all the opportunities available to your team. That’s why you need a way to link relevant accounts within Salesforce, so your team can get complete visibility into all potential opportunities.
Remember that sales team in Germany that just landed a big deal? If that account were linked with related subsidiaries of the parent account, sales teams could quickly spot opportunities and create strategies to leverage them. Viewing account connections provides teams with a powerful way to understand connections at scale in order to grow business faster.
Increasing visibility and cleaning up data
Additionally, issues around data quality can interfere with sales performance and visibility into business opportunities. For example, let’s say that a customer downloads a white paper while viewing your website. He uses the name “Joe Smith.” But a few weeks later, he signs up for a webinar and uses the name “Joseph Smith.” As a result, you now have two records in your CRM that are assigned to two different sales reps.
The customer receives emails and calls from two different people, and the experience feels fragmented and disconnected. That might adversely impact his perception of the company and make it harder to close the deal. But if the deal does close, you still have a problem.
With two sales reps assigned to the contact, there’s a conflict about who owns the deal (and gets paid the commission). Maybe the rep who was initially assigned to the deal feels they should get at least partial credit even if they weren’t the one who closed the deal.
The solution to this scenario is to have a systemized and automated way to keep your data clean, get rid of duplications, and link accounts to give you more territory visibility and help you spot opportunities faster.
Optimizing territory management with advanced AI tools
Sales teams work hard to bring in new opportunities and close deals. And many of your salespeople are very talented. But that doesn’t stop them from hitting a wall when you’re struggling with poor data quality and limited visibility. It’s like trying to complete a task blindfolded. But the good news is that by using an advanced AI tool, such as those available on the AppExchange, you can easily solve these problems.
You can clean bad data at scale, enrich incomplete data, and support your sales teams with the capability to view critical connections between accounts. As a result, they can break through many of the barriers that hold them back, and close more deals.
