Earlier this month, Salesforce presented a good article which addressed the importance of using high-quality data to impact revenue and ROI head on. In the article entitled ‘6 Ways to Grow Your Business Faster with Quality Data’, Amanda Nelson,the Director of Marketing at RingLead, had come back from the Salesforce1 World Tour where she says “It seemed that everyone was talking about data.” In the article, Amanda talks about 6 key ways to grow a business with quality data. 
Let’s take a look at her round up.
The first key is to work smarter with quality data. The problem many sales reps face is that they are the ones spending time doing research attempting to find the right resources. The main reason for this is that marketing doesn’t have the right information. Working smarter with data means streamlining the Sales and marketing process and passing off only sales-ready leads to Sales.
The second factor Amanda discusses is how quality data delivers competitive Intelligence. Quality data gives marketing access to such information as the customer’s market, location data, future opportunities, competitive intelligence and more. Gaining competitive intelligence means staying ahead of competitors by employing measures that gain insight into customer preferences.
The third factor: Know your customers with quality data. Quality data allows marketing to determine the most profitable segments of customers while employing detailed, accurate analytics to identify the best opportunities.
The fourth key factor is understanding your sales reps' performance with quality data. Successful sales reps are a direct result of quality data. Increasing their performance means understanding how many leads they contact, how much deals they close and other important KPIs.
Fifth factor: Quality data helps marketers with lead generation. For instance, reducing the number of fields within a form greatly improves conversion rates. It may reduce the amount of information provided, but the information that is gathered becomes more valuable. Marketers need to extract this data and ensure that leads go to the right sales rep.
The final factor is revenue roll up from quality data. Quality data allows CMOs to gather information about the customers. Who are the ones that generate the most revenue and who are most responsive for up-selling. This information provides more data from the accounts receivable perspective and allows management to make better business decisions.
Data is a valuable commodity and a key factor in most, if not all, marketing and sales processes. Businesses that are just starting to use data in their marketing initiatives are realizing now more than ever how effective and important it really is. Having access to high-quality data means laying down the foundation for proper marketing intelligence that works to enable sales reps to be spared from the wasted effort of pursuing unqualified leads and engaging with disinterested prospects. Best-in-Class performers are using real-time, clean and constantly evolving data to stay ahead of the curve. Are you?
