Datafy Buying

You working in a datafied salesteam?

The wikipedia page (*groan*) at time of blogging contained these two sentences related to Sales;

Customer relationship management: various industries are using datafication to understand their customers better and create appropriate triggers based on each customer’s personality and behaviour. This data is obtained from the language and tone a person uses in an email, phone call or social media.

Poor comment, yes. But let’s drop our bucket into their suggested data well.

Your prospect’s language and tone.

Applying this to our domain of solution sales, I’m pretty sure add-ons to your crm chains of choice exist purporting to mine the grammar and style of your email trails for hidden insight.

Let’s imagine we do not have such awe-inspiring AI at our disposal.

My first ever sale happened after an experienced colleague of mine saw a fax (don’t ask) come in for me. He picked it up, read it, and passed it over. Simply saying, “that’s a buying signal”. It was a copy of the latest letter I’d sent. Duly returned with handwritten scrawl. The prospect had noted I’d (somehow…) mentioned a date that does not exist. Encircled, with a chirp.

How creative – and with what time commitment – do you want to get?

How many written communiqués have you received from your particular precious prospect?

Print ’em off.

Paste onto spare bare piece o’ wall.

Think “language and tone” (& context).

Grab a blue thick pen, mark up the parts that feel promising.

Then a red one, for the possibly dodgy.

What does the comparison in colour tell you? (…if anything…)

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At the risk of demeaning this thought experiment, there is one datafication you can perform that cuts through any alternative.

You must first though, know your winning process.

All those steps, events, movements that when they occur, you are most likely getting that sale.

Colour that in.