Customer journey data provides the linchpin for the digitization of B2B sales and also harbors a wealth of additional information within.

However, only very few sales teams utilize this data in a meaningful way. As a result, they are losing out on valuable opportunities to scale their sales. Here's a summary of how companies can quickly turn this around by making efficient use of their data.

How does Customer Journey Data Provide?

Throughout the digital sales cycle, customers leave behind a large amount of analyzable data. This provides valuable information on the behavior and needs of potential buyers, for example:

• Preferences in communication behavior
• Patterns regarding closing and bouncing tendencies
• Customer's approach to gathering information

This information provides promising insights into which of the sales team’s actions are most effective at particular points in time - thus, helping to close deals faster. Some agile teams are already using AI-powered software to make better data-driven decisions in everyday sales. But by no means all of them do.

Customer Journey Data is Often Left Underutilized

Surveys show that only very few B2B sales organizations evaluate and use their data in a meaningful way. And these companies are missing out on valuable deals - often without even realizing it.

Good Data Management is a Prerequisite for Success

Even in very agile B2B sales teams, the topics of data and knowledge management are often still seen as a dreaded black box. However, proper data management is a key factor for success. For one, managing data efficiently, ensures teams to have a complete overview of all processes in the increasingly digitalized sales cycles of B2B sales. In addition, it renders customer journey data readable and thus usable.

The Digital Sales Cycle Increases Complexity

In 2020, we witnessed a rapidly accelerating shift towards digital-first. Conditions in B2B sales have never changed as quickly and profoundly as in recent years. By 2025, sales experts expect 80% of all B2B sales interactions to take place in digital channels. This requires sales teams to adapt quickly, especially technologically.

Digitized Customers are Becoming Increasingly Demanding

As a result, digitally active customers are becoming increasingly demanding. They expect a good customer experience at every single point of contact within their own customer journey.

The digitally active clientele - or digital natives - are more autonomous than ever before and remain constantly informed via an ever-widening array of communication channels. This also generates more data along different channels throughout the customer journey. Multi- and omnichannel management serve as key parameters in sales optimized for digital buying.  

Even with the best data management, it is becoming increasingly difficult for sales decision-makers to correctly interpret the growing volumes of data without automated software. In the long run, competitive decisions can only be made with the right technologies.

Sales experts such as Gartner, therefore, recommend that B2B companies integrate AI-supported software for process optimization, such as sales intelligence tools like AI Guided Selling Software.

Leveraging Customer Journey Data with Sales Intelligence

The term Sales Intelligence describes software and tools that automatically find, collect, process, correlate and evaluate data on potential customers.

Cleverly used, sales intelligence brings sales teams closer to the right customers - and thus faster to the next deal.

What Makes a Great Sales Intelligence Tool

• Easy integration into the CRM: It is important that sales intelligence software can be integrated directly and easily into the CRM used, such as Hubspot and Pipedrive, so that the available data can be accessed automatically.
• AI-supported software: Behind modern sales intelligence technologies lies an artificial intelligence that is constantly learning by continuously collecting and evaluating data sets. Through this learning process, the analysis and recommendations for action become better and better. Artificial intelligence guarantees hyper-automation. According to Gartner, this is one of the three most important parameters on the path to future-oriented B2B sales with automated processes. Technologies such as AI Guided Selling Software can interpret enormous amounts of data from the customer journey.

How does AI-powered Sales Intelligence Software Support Sales?

AI-powered selling software, also called AI Guided Selling Software, can also help teams make the right decisions in the increasingly complex day-to-day sales environment. Sales technologies like AI Guided Selling Software help sales teams create a personalized customer experience at all touchpoints along the customer journey.

Artificial intelligence specifically focuses on the data from the customer journey that helps the sales team achieve specific goals. For example, AI Guided Selling automatically identifies Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) or the best time to contact potential customers.

This enables sales teams to make the right offers at every stage of the sales cycle, driven by data, and thus lead their customers to the conclusion of a sale more quickly.

Be honest with yourself: Is your sales team making optimal use of customer journey data?

Read more about the possibilities of AI Guided Selling Software for B2B sales in our new eBook "Successful to the Next Deal with AI Guided Selling Software".