As CEO of InsightSquared, I am extremely excited to share that Mediafly, the leader in sales enablement, is acquiring InsightSquared, creating a world-class revenue intelligence and enablement experience for B2B teams. Having spent three decades in sales and marketing leadership roles and been fortunate to witness several significant disruptions driven by technology, I am convinced of three things: We are on the cusp of advancements that will change the game within the revenue functions of B2B companies. Activity and engagement analytics are the keys to assessing the health of a deal and the strength of the overall pipeline. There will…
To a CRO or RevOps leader, predictability is key and surprises are almost always the enemy. So what if you learned four key deals currently in this quarter’s Commit have not interacted with your rep in the past 30+ days? And there are no meetings scheduled. You’d have questions, right?
That’s exactly what occurred last week as we met with a very savvy sales leader at a mid-size tech company. Her initial reaction was doubt—something had to be wrong. Then came the furiously-typed Slack messages to the reps, followed by deep-dive interrogations on account status.
Activity data doesn’t lie.
The data wasn’t wrong. In one deal, the rep had become so emotionally invested, he missed clear risk signals. The contact had cancelled the past two meetings and was taking at least three days to respond to emails. And to top it off, there were rumors of a reorg.
That deal was not going to close. Nor were the other three. The sales leader suddenly had a big gap she had to fill. Fortunately it was identified with more than a month left to go in the quarter.
Activity is the top predictor of sales outcomes.
Quite simply if your rep isn’t engaging with the prospect, the deal is unlikely to close. But how do you get a trusted view of true activity? Hint: it’s not your CRM.
Today less than 25% of managers trust the data in their CRM. And they have good reasons for the distrust as research shows most companies are only capturing 10% of the data needed to effectively evaluate pipeline health and improve outcomes.
That means leaders can’t forecast confidently without one-off calls to managers and reps. They don’t know which deals need coaching or how to help a rep before it’s too late. And sadly they will be left in the dark on account data if and when reps leave the company.
Auto-Logging is not enough.
To solve this issue many RevOps leaders have turned to “auto-logging” tools where reps bcc an email alias. Or they deploy basic auto-capture solutions that tie emails or contacts to an opportunity record. Unfortunately, while these tools save reps time, they do not help leaders spot risks, managers coach or reps improve outcomes. It’s simply documentation.
The best Activity Capture tools show you not just how many emails have been exchanged, but what the context was. Who was involved? How long was the response time? Does the deal even fit your ICP? If your Activity Capture tools aren’t going beyond opportunity data to account for process details—you are not only missing opportunities to identify risk, but also those opportunities that will advance deals faster and grow revenue.
The top RevOps teams use Activity Capture like a proactive lane warning system, one that captures activity not just to store in a CRM like Salesforce, but more importantly to map activities to their unique sales process, consistently tracking what reps are doing and what steps were missed and where changes to should be made.
Activity Capture tools should help RevOps leaders drill into the details to understand key information such as:
- Is the contact responding at a healthy cadence?
- How many times has the deal pushed?
- How does this deal progression compare to similar deals?
- Is the rep engaged at the right level?
- Is the rep holding too many meetings?
- Have the top subject matter experts been brought in?
- Are a majority of deals all stuck in the same stage?
- Are reps ignoring consistent risk factors?
- Is the champion identified and acting as a true champion should?
Find the Blindspots Lurking in Your Pipeline
As you look for ways to eliminate the blindspots and get ahead of risks, here are some of the most common blindspots your CRM can’t spot—but InsightSquared’s Activity Capture can.
- Deals in Commit without consistent engagement AND/OR meaningful activity (requires a view on past AND future planned meetings/calls)
- Deals in at a particular stage where key documents are not in place (NDA, procurement approval)
- Deals without a validated Champion (sure your rep labeled someone a Champion, but are they truly acting as one?)
- Deals with no identification of, access to, and meaningful engagement with the Economic Buyer
- Deals that are single-threaded (let’s face it, very few deals are won when you only have one contact at the company)
- Deals that are flat-out stalled or dead that keep showing up in the pipeline month after month (driftwood that keeps pushing)
Ready to Eliminate your RevOps Blindspots? Start with the RevOps checklist.
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