The Foundation for a Data-Driven Culture is Established at the Top

Top managers in companies with strong data-driven cultures set the assumption that choices must be based on data and that this is the standard, not the exception, so they set an example for others to follow. When it comes to accomplishing their main goals, 93% of B2B marketers believe that data-driven marketing is effective for them.

A good example would be leaders at a bank who pore through data gathered from controlled market trials to determine new product launches. Employees who want to be taken seriously need to interact with leaders on their terms, and this habit spreads downward. The leadership of a few at the top can spark significant changes in organizational standards.

Data-Driven Decision-Making in Practice

When making business decisions, today’s largest and most successful companies leverage data to their advantage. However, when it comes to their customers, B2B businesses spend a lot of time collecting feedback from their sales staff. A strong B2B firm prioritizes its customers, adjusts its business choices to meet the requirements of its customers, and strives to establish a long-term commercial relationship with them.

To really understand the consumer, there must be continuous contact, and as a result, a large portion of the data B2B businesses have is just an understanding of their customers. Qualitative data may be obtained from as basic a source as a direct discussion between sales staff and a customer, in which the sales team addresses the client’s specific requirements. Consider Amazon and Starbucks’ success stories to understand better how your company may use data analytics in its decision-making process.

Data may be used as evidence supporting assumptions, providing managers the confidence to venture into new regions and procedures without incurring risk. However, simply wishing to be data-driven is insufficient. Companies must create cultures that allow this mindset to thrive on being data-driven. Leaders may help to foster this transition by setting an example, modeling new habits, and setting expectations for what it means to make data-driven decisions. And therefore, companies must hire revenue operations to design and build the business processes, collect the metrics and provide insights to improve the decision-making process to establish a scalable revenue machine and growth.

Carefully Choose Metrics That Need to be Used

It is essential for B2B companies to make use of just the finest, most comprehensive, and most insightful data when developing their analytics strategies. Unfortunately, high-quality data is difficult to define and verify since requirements differ from project to project. Yet, analysts depend on the completeness and consistency of a dataset to make decision-making easier in their work.

Leaders can significantly impact behavior by carefully selecting what to monitor and what metrics they expect staff to utilize. For example, assume a company may profit by forecasting price movements from competitors. There is a metric for that, known as time-based prediction accuracy. As a result, a team should regularly make precise forecasts regarding the amount and direction of such shifts. It should also keep track of the accuracy of such forecasts, which will increase with time.

Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, and Nobel Laureate, and his long-time associate Amos Tversky discovered that people have a planning fallacy where they overpromise and underdeliver by making inaccurate forecasts of project goals.

To construct more realistic project plans, Kahneman and Tversky proposed taking a step back. They advocated utilizing a forecasting technique known as reference class forecasting. The length or expense of a project is projected by comparing it to a set of previous similar projects. This is in contrast to the typical inside view, in which the project is planned with minimal consideration for historical performance or its capacity to accomplish established goals.

Revenue Operations and Metrics

Revenue operations is a comprehensive approach to business operations that integrates sales, marketing, and customer satisfaction functions. It looks after the whole customer lifetime and guarantees that all departments are held responsible for the organization’s income.

One of the main goals is to utilize data to successfully inspire teams and forecast and enhance the production of revenues. One method of doing this is via revenue operations, which aims to reduce operational silos that have traditionally existed between marketing, sales, and customer success — the business activities that are directly linked to revenue — and other departments.

To be specific, revenue operations bring all operations across the full customer life cycle together under a single overarching objective. The organizational structure of revenue operations lends itself to assisting decision-makers in smoothly integrating data and overcoming this inherent mistrust. This is accomplished by eliminating silos, consolidating data streams, and increasing transparency.

The Right Person to Lead a Data-Driven Decision-Making Team

Defining roles and responsibilities, creating hiring profiles, recruiting talent with the relevant qualities, and consistently growing and nurturing talent are necessary steps in building a great internal team. Revenue operations are the right function to support the team, as they have their finger on the pulse of the company. They assist the various departments in making better choices by providing data-driven insights and suggestions to them. They put in place tools to optimize outcomes while also ensuring that the infrastructure works smoothly across all of the tools and systems.

Team leaders are skilled in quality management and process improvement techniques, providing them an understanding of analysis and design and a respect for processes and details. These leaders can organize problems, allocate tasks, and assist personnel in seeing the broad picture so that everyone is working toward one goal.

Several companies rotate their employees between departments, such as marketing or finance. These rotations allow the managers and salespeople to gain valuable experience and improve their skills by becoming more tech-savvy and building on their technical and analytic abilities needed for the position.

The right person to lead the revenue operations is someone who:

• Respects both the analysis/design and the process/detail mindsets.
• Who can envision the business and technology future?
• Who can collaborate with leaders across the organization as well as external partners to ensure ongoing salesforce?