Some companies are achieving extraordinary results with considerate efforts while others seem to be just plain lucky. Our study of over 2,000 participants in 60 different market segments reveals that more than 82% of those that outperformed their competitors had significant technology integration.
These companies have a clear vision, and a well-framed plan to back it up, and a data pipeline to execute at every level. They focus on what really matters: whether they can beat the odds and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage for dominant market positioning.
Let’s take a deeper dive into the key insights that CxO’s and growth leaders can apply to enhance their long-term strategy.
Tailoring data pipelines for competitive positioning
Analytics can enable a first-mover advantage to organizations that treat various customers as segmented units with distinct market characteristics.
For example, it can help them identify which customers value the lowest price and then develop a targeted pricing model based on that insight.
Tactic: SMEs are often cash-flow constrained, identifying candidates for 48 to 72-month long pricing contracts has helped one prominent services firm increase qualified lead conversions by upwards of 16%.
The power of analytics lies in how it translates the insights into actions that can be implemented, often what we call the “negative space”: the vast untapped potential of the available data being analyzed and executed on.
An accelerating pipeline of unstructured data, the power of advanced analytics, and the right operating model provides the precision and speed that drives profitable growth.
Retail Case: Customer Behavior Segmentation
Taking the context of the example above, retail chains we spoke with have identified common customer behavior patterns. It was often the case that shoppers who paid a premium were more likely to try and buy a product.
We also determined that customers with purchase intent of abandoned carts in eCommerce were more likely to go to a competitor offering the same product at a cheaper price.
Tactic: By optimizing the funnel, prominently collecting name and email before insertion, companies can push targeted follow-up offers to increase cart conversion significantly.
Through tailoring retail and eCommerce data approaches, retails can expand its characteristic driven customer segments by appropriating them according to whether they were price-sensitive, engaged or indifferent.
Get in touch to learn how we can enable your sales and marketing teams with advanced analytics solutions.
Data at every customer touch point
The key component is to apply the approach to the entire customer relationship. Strategic approaches noted above can made significantly more effective by broadening the scale of application.
Qualifying sales leads and securing the right price is just a start. Companies that want to use analytics to improve the prices they charge may have to first get comfortable with their own data capabilities.
Gartner Research notes most companies are already integrating data from their customer relationship databases (CRMs), including the ones that can be used to obtain detailed pricing data (operational “O” data: historical transactional information).
A crucial missing component is the management and analysis of after-sales customer experience (CX data) that will build an integrated 360-degree pipeline from customer acquisition to success.
Customer success teams shouldn’t just focus on impact from delivery, but the negative space that feeds into next-gen product development.
Growth leaders must set a vision and tone from the top that bonds the outcomes from sales teams to product development as a join-initiative to continually improve the firm.
Strategic Recommendations for Data Pipeline Implementation
In either extraordinary or moderate growth case, however, success depends on a company’s ability to attract and retain a set of highly motivated customers. It also depends on the company’s ability to build an organization that can make effective use of the data it collects.
To get the full value of sales, product, and process analytics, a company needs to build a few key capabilities:
- Execution-focused organization with a clear mandate and an executive team that knows how to use the data it collects to develop effective recommendations.
- Sales team that is constantly reviewing deal conversion decisions and regularly revisiting them.
- Processes that enables a company to develop product innovation recommendations and take action.
Schedule a no-cost 30-minute session to learn more about how we can deliver an actionable strategy to enhance deal flow pipeline, improve conversion, and drive customer engagement for your organization.
