Bryant Brewster

By Bryant Brewster

Using data analytics to shape your selling strategy
Harnessing and applying data analytics whenever possible to differentiate an organization’s products and customer experience is becoming less of a luxury and more of a requirement for success. Determining the best way to apply these analytics to a company’s selling strategy, however, often raises questions.

Offering-centric vs. customer-centric
Traditionally, organizations have taken an offering-based approach to data use — a company creates products and services, then searches for customers to fit those exact offerings. However, as technological capabilities evolve, this approach is being left behind in favor of a methodology that centers around customer obsession.

As Gartner puts it: While offering-centric businesses “act reactively when customers reach out to the company with needs or pain points,” customer-centric businesses “act proactively to prevent customers from experiencing pain points or gaps in their journey.” That being said, it will take more than a mindset of customer obsession, but rather the right tools and strategies, to act upon it.

Consider utilizing a “closed-loop” approach
It is not enough to simply use data analytics to generate insights, act on those insights and consider the job done. The utilization of analytics to generate insights is a never ending process that constantly evolves and feeds back into itself. Successful organizations use analytics processes to mine insights from data; take action based on what those findings; assess the outcomes of those actions; and then feed that
knowledge back into their internal systems. This is called the “closed-loop” approach.

A Forrester survey found that 67% of advanced insight-driven businesses utilizing a closed-loop approach reported at least double-digit revenue growth over the previous year, compared with just 26% at beginner insight-driven businesses. You must go further than simply generating insights. You must focus on action and learning, so that those same insights can be used to constantly refine internal processes and perfect
your engagement with customers.

A customer-obsessed firm must master many different technologies
There is no single technology in the market that, when utilized, will achieve a customer centric approach by itself. Customer obsession requires a complex technology stack that will drive the data, analytics and insights an organization will need to master, all of which revolve around different use cases and stakeholders that must be reconciled. After all, how is a company supposed to deliver a unique and differentiated customer experience if their analytics are siloed in various parts of the business?

Establishing a Center of Excellence
This situation creates a perfect opportunity for you to establish an insights-based Center of Excellence (CoE). A CoE works to streamline analytics efforts by utilizing a team of experts that can leverage their familiarity of the different data sources, products and services of the organization to have a deep understanding of their customer base and steer decision-makers in the right direction. Forward-thinking organizations are already
engaging in this practice, with Forrester reporting that 80% of data and analytics decision-makers at advanced insights-driven businesses say that their firm has or is implementing an insight-CoE for business intelligence and advanced analytics.

Go ahead, become obsessed with your customer
Becoming customer-obsessed means that you must know absolutely everything about your customers and allow their desires, pain points and needs to dictate the decisions that drive the customer experience.

Businesses must be able to understand what their customer is thinking in addition to their needs, so that they can make sure their products and solutions are tailored to address them. Only by ruthlessly applying analytics and insight strategies on the zettabytes of data that organizations have on their customers, products and competitors, and incorporating these strategies into their product offerings and customer experience can an organization achieve customer obsession.