Most businesses could benefit from having a dedicated sales analyst. A sales analyst is a dedicated staff member who spends his or her time looking through and analyzing sales data. Their goal is to assess the information and use it to improve marketing operations. This is accomplished by looking at past sales trends and projecting these into the future. In practice, analysts mostly work with sales analytics tools to prepare forecasts and sales reports alongside management recommendations for improving the company’s bottom line.
What does a sales analyst do?
Sales analysts are tasked with factoring the state of the economy and industry into their work. This requires keeping up with the trade news and buzz. A good analyst will understand the marketplace and where customer demands are heading. Sales goals can then be set using this information.
Though sales analysts often get to make their bosses happy by telling them about stellar numbers, they also have to announce the opposite: the occasional drop in revenues or profits. In these cases, an analyst can help you figure out what happened and why. When times are good, they can also explain what to keep doing in order to stay ahead. Whatever the condition of your company, an analyst can help you learn the right lessons and improve either way.
Many sales analyses are routine. These can be weekly, quarterly, or annual reports benchmarked against comparable periods. But having a dedicated analyst also makes it easy to summon ad-hoc reports that serve a particular purpose. These reports can help with the expansion of the business into new markets and territories, or with the introduction of a new product line.
Benefits of Hiring a Sales Analyst
All sorts of companies worldwide are getting into the analytics trend. It appears that Big Data is the thing everybody is buzzing about. Is it something you should get into? Well as business services in data mining and analytics become more varied and user-friendly, it has made integrating analysis into your strategy more accessible, affordable, and appealing.
Whatever your business type or industry, you have to make money by providing something to somebody. Knowing what that customer wants and how they behave is absolutely key to success. A comprehensive marketing strategy should integrate your web site and social media channels and include a customer relationship database. You should be able to analyze web traffic and CRM data to better understand your target demographic and how they behave. This will help you to optimize your services and niche marketing campaigns, boosting your sales and profits in the long term.
Using Analysis to Drive Profits
Analysis is only as valuable as what you make of it. If you’ve got a full time data analyst on staff, you’ll want to use them for more than dashboards, performance trends, simple forecasts and pipeline analysis. Though all of these should be part of your approach, you’ll want to take it a step further as well. Analysis is about asking the right questions to find the right answers.
A good sales analyst will apply your company history and information to determine major key answers to pressing questions regarding strategy, competition, employee retention, market segmentation, and regional sales strategies. The possibilities are endless really. You might think of data analytics as an art and a science, and an inquisitive analyst brings more to your organization that just a collection of data skills. They bring ingenuity and curiosity, energies necessary for strategic development.
In the Big Data age, you don’t want your company to fall behind the pack. Maximize your profits by investing in a savvy data analyst to process your data and support strategy with real information. Whatever your industry, a sales analyst is key to revolutionizing your marketing approach.
