As Impartner's CRO, Brinkerhoff leverages his 20+ years of experience in sales leadership to empower today's enterprise partnership teams.
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As a long-time sales executive, I've witnessed the power of generative sales data in action. Instead of gathering inert data, the concept of generative sales data is about making your data drive actual and predictable revenue within the platforms you have in place. Put simply, it's data that enables future automated sales motions.
Today, it's set to transform the way we all do business both internally and with our third-party partner networks. Here's how.
What is generative sales data from partners?
Gartner predicted in 2022 that by 2026, more than half of B2B sales organizations (65%) will shift from intuition-based to data-driven decision-making, using technology to integrate data, analytics and workflows.
Using sales data from your indirect resellers and other partners enables you to drastically expand your potential flywheel of revenue. When you make the first-party data from your indirect and co-selling sales channels work for you, everyone grows faster together.
Generative sales data isn't just about numbers; it's about empowering our sales and partner teams to focus on what they do best: selling. Whether it's through internal sales motions or partnerships, the key is to gather (and use!) data that can be deployed for predictable revenue growth.
What does this look like in practice?
At the core of any strategy is an integrated tech stack that seamlessly unites customer and partner data. The best partner automation platforms are built to gather and sync first-party partner data with their other selling tools.
For example, if you have an indirect sales program, your organization is already gathering deal registration data in some capacity. Generative sales data in action may look like gathering deal data and leveraging automation to dynamically create email campaigns that go out to partners to incentivize closing the deal and potential clients with value-added materials to make their decisions. The goal is to take the data you have and build automated programs around it so you drive the deal to closure while better scaling your sales organization.
It can go in the other direction, too. For example, we helped one of our clients build advanced workflows that united data across their PRM (partner relationship management system), CRM (customer relationship management system), and demand gen tools to send automated lead alerts to their partners when potential customers were engaging with content on the client's website. This gave them real-time insights into customer questions and areas of interest that their partners could then speak to.
The power of generative sales data doesn't stop there. Companies are also analyzing partner data at a macro scale to identify core characteristics of high-intent audiences. From there, companies can craft fully automated paid media campaigns tailored to these audiences and then use AI tools to boost effectiveness. And they can do so directly on behalf of their third-party resellers. Stanley Black & Decker, another client of ours, realized a 49% decrease in cost per lead when we helped them leverage generative sales data. And we helped Xerox achieve a 75% decrease in cost per lead.
In the post-sale journey, companies can also leverage data from their non-transactional service partners to enhance customer retention rates. By identifying services offered and/or behaviors of top-performing partners in that metric, those insights can be built into onboarding and training materials for other non-transactional partners or even internal support teams. It could also be built into an automated incentive program, encouraging other non-transactional partners to provide the same type of support.
It's time to think beyond conventional boundaries. Today's top companies are setting the pace by putting sales data into action, leveraging integrated tech stacks to unite customer and partner data seamlessly. The connective tissue that brings together business, process and people across program models fundamentally changes your market advantage in business.
Let's dare to think creatively, leveraging data to create industry-leading sales workflows, customer experiences and growth processes that empower people to know the next best thing to focus on.
Getting Started
From my experience, leveraging generative sales data requires a strategic approach. As Gartner notes, “Investing in virtual selling tech right now requires a classic case of slowing down to speed up. A carefully designed, purpose-built virtual selling technology stack will help sales teams more predictably hit the number."
If you're using indirect sales models, a partner automation platform can unite your partner and customer data into one unified source of truth. Use these automation or AI-powered tools to build programs around data that deliver predictable revenue models for your business.
No matter the technology used, though, building programs requires slowing down before you start. Ask yourself critical questions around these areas.
• Business impact: What is the predicted revenue, and how will we prove it? How detailed can we be in tying data to direct revenue? How will we assess the secondary benefits of generative sales data initiatives, such as improved sales efficiency or enhanced customer satisfaction?
• Stakeholders: Who are the key individuals (internal and external) that should be involved? How can we ensure their engagement and buy-in? What mechanisms will support ongoing communication and collaboration?
• Process: How will the process work, and what portions can be fully automated? What are the key milestones and deliverables for each phase of the data implementation process? How will progress be tracked and measured against benchmarks?
• Data quality and governance: How can we ensure the accuracy, reliability and integrity of the generative sales data being collected and analyzed? What measures will be put in place for compliance with any regulatory standards?
• Integration with existing systems: How will the generative sales data integrate with our existing sales and marketing systems? What integration methods will be utilized to ensure seamless and real-time data flow across systems?
• Training and skills development: What training and upskilling initiatives can ensure our sales and partner teams have the necessary skills to leverage generative sales data effectively?
• Continuous improvement: How will we monitor and evaluate the performance of our generative sales data initiatives over time? What mechanisms will be put in place for continuous improvement and optimization?
By addressing these questions, we can harness the full potential of generative sales data to drive revenue growth in our increasingly data-driven business world.
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