Predictive Analytics in Sales

Technology has given us the ability to capture all kinds of metrics. These metrics allow us to make predictions about some future event or outcomes. Here are the predictive analytics you need to worry about now.

• New Opportunities Created: How well you are going to do two, three, or four quarters from now is easily predicted by looking at the number of new opportunities you are creating now. If you go weeks or months without creating new opportunities, it is certain that you will not win opportunities in future quarters. If you are not planting seeds, you are going to have nothing to harvest. This is a natural, Universal law, and one that cannot be broken, so the predictive value is very, very high.
• Face to Face Sales Calls: The more face-to-face visits you have now, the greater results you will have in the future. Maybe for you it’s not face-to-face, but it is ear-to-ear, or digital face to digital face over video conference. The predictive value of real, meaningful, value-creating conversations is very high. The more of these “real” conversations you have, the better your results in the future. Email and lesser forms of communication also have predictive value; they indicate poorer results in the future.
• Commitments Gained: You can easily determine what your future results are going to look like by analyzing the commitments you are gaining now. Leaving a sales interaction without gaining the commitment to take the next step with you means that you can predict a longer sales cycle, stalled deals, and fewer won opportunities. Gaining the next necessary commitment allows you to predict with greater certainty that your opportunity is progressing and that you are positioning yourself to win.

There are more and more programs that can tell you that someone opened your email. There are programs that can notify you that someone clicked a link or downloaded your white paper. There are even programs that score prospective clients on the likelihood that they are ready to engage with you and potentially purchase what it is you sell. There is nothing wrong with using technology to help you sell better.

But if you really want to predict your future results, these three metrics will do more than most anything else.