Sales trends analysis helps you find patterns in historical data so you can use it to make improvements. Learn how you can use this info on your sequences.
Want to know how your campaigns are performing? It's time to implement sales trends analysis. That's the process of analyzing your historical data and looking for patterns of decline and improvement. It can help you make forecasts about the future, but it can also help you adjust your current strategies to duplicate successes and improve failures.
It can even help you improve your email sequences. Maybe leads aren't opening your sequence emails or maybe your conversion rates took a dip last month and you want to know why.
Understanding the importance of sales trends analysis can help you identify key sequence trends and avoid common mistakes. High-quality sequences can make or break your sales engagement, which can have a huge impact on how many deals you close and overall customer satisfaction.
Sales trends analysis is the process of gathering and analyzing historical data to check for trends and patterns. You'll typically use data from a certain period of time, like the last week, month, or quarter. You might discover a major drop or increase in sales during that period, which can lead to further investigation into why that happened and what you should do about it.
Besides breaking your data down into time periods, you can also segment it into other categories, like sales for specific products, geographical regions, customer types, market segments, sales channels, specific sales or marketing campaigns, and competitor timeline.
Analyzing historical sales trends helps you make informed decisions based on actual data rather than relying on a process that lends itself to human error. When you see new trends in your data, whether they're good or bad, you can make adjustments to your sales strategy, and ultimately, it should impact your performance.
You might notice that you have higher conversions rates via email than you do through social media outreach. You might notice that certain reps have low activities numbers. You might notice that certain products began underperforming when a competitor began selling a superior option. All of this can help you make strategic decisions about your next moves. And even when you aren't noticing anything out of the ordinary, it's important to make a habit of reviewing your data so that you don't encounter any major surprises in the future.
Sales trends analysis can help you create forecasts. If a product you sell is hot at the moment, you may need to hire a new sales rep or two. If you find that you typically sell more of a specific product during the summer compared to other seasons, you might want to ramp up your efforts in late spring each year.
Sales trends analysis can help you with every aspect of your sales process, including determining how your email sequences perform.
There are many ways to collect data from your sales team, each with their own pros and cons. We recommend using a sales engagement platform, like Outreach or Salesloft and integrating your CRM. While your CRM provides you with some data, a sales engagement platform logs your sales activities automatically, which can help round out that data. When your data from both platforms sync, you can use it to create reports that update in real time so you can observe your metrics at any given point for that day, the last week, the past month, or any other time frame.
When you're focused on looking for trends related to your email sequences, you'll want to incorporate some key metrics. These might include:
So, how do you know your email sequences are underperforming? Here are some indicators that you'll likely find while analyzing trends in your metrics:
The "why" behind your email sequences' underperformance will vary from sales team to sales team. Assuming you're reaching out to high-quality leads, three of the most common reasons are:
Personalization is one of the best ways to improve engagement and increase conversion rates. The subject line is often a great place to start. Add the recipient's name, the name of their company, or their geographic location — something that will get them to open that email. You can also personalize the content in many ways, like using a conversational tone or mentioning something you've learned about the person recently. For example, maybe they wrote a great article that was published in an industry magazine. Tell them how much you liked it. You can also mention their specific pain points.
When it comes to sending follow-up emails, timing is everything. If you send too many too soon, your leads might get annoyed and mark you as spam. If you wait too long between emails, your leads might forget you exist. While every situation is unique, in general, follow-up emails should be sent about two to three days after initial contact and up to two to three times a week.
Value-driven content speaks to your leads' pain points, offers solutions, and builds trust in your company. It shows them you're an authority in your niche, and it can help improve engagement. Value-driven content might look like providing educational content, like how-to guides and demos. It could be as simple as sharing case studies and interviews from previous or current customers. When crafting an email sequence, include whatever you think might add value to the lives of your leads.
One of the worst things you can do when making decisions about your sequences is not using your historical data. It's not unusual for a sales team to get used to seeing similar metrics each time they pull reports, which can make it easy to become complacent and assume that what you're doing is working 100% of the time. Unfortunately, even if you have the best sequences in the world, anything can change that at any given time, ranging from market trends to a new product from a competitor. Never make assumptions about your sequences or any of your sales activities.
Always rely on high-quality data from your sales engagement platform and make sure you have a clear understanding of its implications. Use tools like A/B testings to confirm any findings you pull from your data and check your data consistently.
When you do discover problems with your sequences, remember that personalization and value-driven content can help you make improvements. Tailor your sequences to your leads. Use a casual, friendly tone and offer helpful content that clearly addresses the recipient's pain points. You don't want your emails to sound like generic sales pitches. Again, you can implement A/B testing and see which of your messages resonate the most.
And remember that timing is everything. You want to be persistent, but you don't want to be annoying. Send most follow-up emails every two to three days. In general, Tuesday through Thursday between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. are considered the best times to send sales emails, but keep in mind that this can vary between industries and even job roles. It's also important to remember the time zones where your recipients are located. Historical data can play a role here too. Take a look at the metrics related to your sequences and determine when open and conversion rates have been higher for the same types of leads.
Sales trends analysis is the process of analyzing your historical data to look for new trends and patterns. This gives you an unbiased overview of which parts of your sales strategies are working and what's not. It can even apply to your email sequences. Looking over historic metrics, like conversion and open rates, can help you determine if your sequences are helping or hurting your current efforts and what steps you might need to take to fix them.
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