Leveraging Market Insights to Structure Your Sales Process

It was the sales statistic heard round the world: Over 90 percent of sales teams missed reaching 80 percent or more of their quotas last year. 

Are challenging market conditions to blame? Perhaps inaccurate historical data? Was it an inexperienced sales team?

Maybe it was all of the above. 

“In today’s economic climate, changing market conditions and shifting buyer needs make it difficult for sellers to reach high levels of attainment using traditional methods of selling,” said marketing experts at Sales Enablement PRO. “In order to be effective, sales processes need to evolve along with the buyer.”

Research by QuotaPath shows that unrealistic sales goals take down sales teams 31 percent of the time. What’s worse than unachievable quotas? An unstructured sales process, which accounts for around 32 percent of sales quota fails. 

The truth is that salespeople can’t meet sales goals with inaccurate data. Accurate data provides the foundation for building successful sales strategies to guide sales teams to identify promising leads, understand customer needs, and tailor their approach accordingly. Without reliable data, salespeople risk wasted time, missed opportunities, and ultimately fall short of their targets. 

Achievable sales goals depend on two things: a well-defined market and a structured sales process. Successful GTM strategies use more granular marketing insight to create an aligned sales process that clarifies KPIs and bolsters realistic sales goals. To better understand the finer points of a market, ask yourself these questions, you must begin by defining your market, building your sales process, and transforming market understanding into revenue growth.

Define Your Market

Most companies define their customer markets by company size, geographic location, and demographics. But there are additional checkpoints that are instrumental to defining groups for better results. To take a more granular approach to understanding the market, here are four things to consider: 

1. Who are you competing against?
Look at how your customers position themselves. What sets your product or service apart.

2. What is the customer looking for via website home page, landing pages, form fills, downloads, webinar registrations, etc.?
A customer’s engagement level will help determine their stage in the buyer’s journey. By tracking website activity, form fills, downloads, webinar registrations, etc., the sales team can prepare to highlight those product features and services as part of the sales strategy.

3. How close are they to buying?
Pinpointing the buyer’s position in the sales cycle streamlines it and minimizes resource allocation on opportunities lacking closure potential. By prioritizing the cultivation of higher-quality leads, your sales efforts are concentrated on the most promising prospects, ultimately amplifying lifetime customer value.

4. Who isn’t responding to your messaging?
You’ll find an audience that matches your target demographic, but they don’t respond to your messaging. These customers can be segmented for a future, personalized campaign.

Build Your Sales Process

If a sales rep falls short, the first thing to examine is the sales process. A structured sales process or sales funnel is still the most effective way to ensure your sales team focuses on qualified leads. 

According to Salesforce, your sales process is a roadmap for salespeople to successfully move prospects through the sales cycle stages until conversion before focusing on retention. If you are still skeptical about the value of a structured sales funnel, here are four reasons to reconsider: 

1. Understand Prospects
This strategy helps cultivate a deeper understanding of prospective clients and their specific needs. Moreover, an effective sales process delineates detailed buyer personas and ideal customer profiles, empowering sales representatives to pinpoint individuals with the highest propensity for conversion.

2. Define Qualified Leads
By prioritizing highly qualified leads, sales reps can secure more deals in a shorter time frame, potentially streamlining the overall sales cycle duration as well.

3. Accurately Forecast Sales
This understanding allows for more precise predictions regarding the number of potential deals that can be closed within a specific timeframe, facilitating the establishment of more realistic quotas.

4. Monitor Follow-Up
Adhering to a structured sales process helps representatives consistently follow up with prospects at the ideal moments and through appropriate channels, effectively maintaining their interest.

5. Enhance Customer Experience
Occasionally, representatives may want to rush to close prematurely. However, when prospects are not prepared for the next stage, this approach leads to confusion and can potentially interfere with the deal.Start with data as your foundation. Then let things get personal by analyzing this information to formulate equitable territory management with trustworthy KPIs.“Personalization transforms a good sales conversation into a great one,” said Sean Hayes, senior director of global business development at Aircall.

According to Hubspot research, 53 percent of sales professionals see the value of adding personalization to the buying process for each prospect.

A sales process guides representatives gradually through the steps while remaining attuned to their buying behavior and expectations.

Transforming Market Understanding into Revenue Growth

The risk of losing a sale due to a slow, bad-data-influenced response is real, which means data supporting territory management strategies must be accessible and accurate. However, a recent study by HubSpot found that only 27 percent of marketing professionals say their data is fully integrated with systems and tools. 

By using a single data source—like Fullcast—sales managers can segment AI-supported data into standard territories like geography and company size plus specialized audiences that leverage sales reps’ strengths, customer engagement, and the sales funnel stage. With the power of Fullcast and your Salesforce CRM working together, teams can leverage analytics-based omnichannel sales and marketing strategies. 

Whether it’s identifying high-potential leads, refining messaging strategies, or optimizing sales funnels, integrating market insights empowers businesses to navigate the sales journey with precision and purpose. By leveraging these insights, your sales team can crush those sales goals for long-term growth, profitability, and customer satisfaction.

We Can Help

Fullcast was built for RevOps leaders by RevOps leaders to bring together all of the moving pieces of our clients’ sales go-to-market strategies and automate their execution. We seamlessly connect go-to-market planning activities with tactical sales execution, enabling your operations, sales, finance, and customer success teams to make continuous adjustments in response to real-time strategy changes. From territory management to performance tracking, we operate with speed, agility, and AI-powered automation. 

Book a demo today.