Big Data for Sales (As Seen on Salesforce Live)

Predictive analytics can decode the human genome, predict who you will fall in love with, and detect international fraud. It’s also been used to optimize marketing. But can it help sales?

Salesforce.com thinks it can, and the company recently announced its Analytics Cloud to underscore that belief. Salesforce also invited XANT, which has been using big data and predictive analytics for years to accelerate sales, to take the stage at Dreamforce with one of its customers, California Casualty, to explore exactly how this works.

“We’ve become successful because our customers have become successful using our technology,” said Dave Boyce, vice president of product marketing at XANT. “We use science and predictive analytics to prescribe the actions that drive more sales, especially in an inside sales function.”

The XANT platform harnesses the power of more than 10 billion sales interactions and 100 million anonymized customer profiles. A group of 12 Ph.D. scientists is hard at work, continuously fine-tuning the system. It prescribes the right actions for sales teams to take in the following areas:

• Voice communications
• Email
• Motivation/Gamification
• Hiring

Every time a sales rep sends an email or makes a phone call, the platform gets smarter. Every time a sales manager makes a hire, the system becomes more precise in its predictions, Boyce said.

“Companies that buy our product see their culture change,” he said. “We’re helping salespeople understand when and how to communicate with their customers using the power of data science.”

Boyce noted that XANT customers often experience results like these:

• Sales reps go from averaging 30 calls a day to averaging 120 calls a day.
• Revenue increases of 12%, 30%, 50% or above 100%, depending on where the company is in its adoption of inside sales strategies.

California Casualty Chief Marketing Officer Mike McCormick revealed how his company uses data analytics to sell home and auto insurance to its niche market of firefighters, police officers, teachers and nurses.

“Using PowerDialer with Salesforce allows us to take advantage of big data at the sales rep’s desk and turn it into real dollars and cents,” he said. “It helps us to make smart decisions about how to communicate with customers and close deals.”

McCormick also commented on how the XANT sales acceleration platform changed his sales team’s culture.

“We had a good outbound sales strategy, but it wasn’t improving,” he said.

After he implemented PowerDialer, he saw an immediate lift in contacts, quotes, sales and revenue. He was equally impressed by the reduction in employee turnover.

“It created a better sales environment,” McCormick said. “Our new reps were able to ramp up quicker and succeed more quickly, which led to lower turnover and increased job satisfaction.”

Watch the video interview on Salesforce Live.