3 Mistakes Managers Make with Data Analytics

I’m just finishing off my second full week in my new position as Manager of Sales & Business Development. I have learned an immense amount of knowledge in the past two weeks and I am so grateful for it. 

With this being a completely new role for me, I immediately began searching the internet for tips and tricks on being a successful manager and how to best support my team. Out of all the articles and infographics I read, I kept seeing the same message, know your data. 

I believe every company sits on data gold mines so I get the hype surrounding data analytics. As part of my new duties, using our Qlik Sense dashboards is a large component so I can measure sales, sales rep performance, and gain usable insights from trends.

During the training process to become a successful manager and having worked with many managers facilitating training, I have identified 3 mistakes that often arise. 

Mistake #1: Not using all the data available 

It doesn’t make sense to sit in the dark when there is so much data swimming in organizations. Using a good business intelligence tool to gather valuable data is important to educate staff, better manage and coach staff and understand gaps in processes. 

Let me give you an example. In our system we track as much data as we can because things you wouldn’t imagine have a correlation, actually do! One thing I love to track is outbound calls and time on the call for each sales rep. This helps us prepare our calling campaigns because we can see day and time trends to help better target our audience. It also is helpful when evaluating performance and allows for valuable conversations during one on one meetings. 

I also track number of opportunities in each stage of our sales funnel. This is a great visual to have on the screen during these one on one meetings as well. If there are too many sitting in pre-funnel it provides an opportunity to discuss strategy. 

Mistake #2: Not letting your data speak for itself

One of the challenges I hear more often than not is that managers have to go into different systems to analyze data that should be integrated into one simple system for quick decision making capabilities, ease of use and efficiency.