Don't trust your gut: rely on sales intelligence when closing deals

Gut instincts are dead, long live sales intelligence!

The "golden gut" is a term used to describe the ability of some extraordinarily creative and visionary leaders to use only their intuition when developing a strategy, product, or offer.

And while there may be a few golden gut visionaries in the world (Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg), one of the worst things a sales rep can do is rely on their "gut instinct."

Yes – while it may feel empowering to trust your instincts as a sales rep, it might be the worst thing you can do for closing deals.

The best sales reps work on increasing their sales intelligence

The highest performing sales leaders demonstrate the ability to combine quantitative data from various marketing and sales automation platforms with a keen sales intuition about the prospect's mindset and buying motivations to deliver results.

But in the end, the data drives their decisions, not their feelings. If you're using your gut instead of the data, you are likely blind to the true factors why your prospects are churning and the sales team is not continually improving.

Sales team leaders need to leverage sales process automation, data analysis, and past performance to drive new closed deals and improve team performance. Lay your instincts to rest, and utilize your sales tools to make the best decisions for your team.

Meaningful sales forecasting starts with data

One tangible way you can do this as a leader is in sales forecasting.

Oftentimes, leaders will forecast sales benchmarks and quotas using their instincts, not data. These inevitably lead to problems such as:

• Discouragement and low morale because the forecast is incorrectly high or low
• Stagnant performance and low achieving culture from being able to meet goals with little effort

With detailed document analytics, you're able to take historical data to build out quantitatively sound forecasts, which improve both strategy and sales team execution.

Are they interested? Use sales intelligence to answer that question.

Spending too much time with prospects that have little to no chance of closing often keeps sales teams from meeting their goals. Precious time and energy is given away to prospects that lack the finances, decision-making ability, or commitment to moving forward.

Use document tracking tools to determine which prospects are most deserving of your sales reps' time.

Within the first few interactions, your reps may have a "read" or gut feeling about whether the prospect will move to the next stage in the sales funnel. However, some of the best sales team leaders will tell you time and time again that their intuition analyzed a prospect incorrectly.

Document tracking reveals your prospect's true interests and objections

There are many reasons why a prospect seems disinterested at the beginning of the sales process:

• They have been burned by other companies like yours in the past
• They have had bad experiences with sales reps in their career
• They don't trust sales reps to do what is in their best interest

A successful sales rep is able to overcome these objections through exploratory calls and reach a level of trust and mutual agreement. This often turns a cold prospect into a hot one.

Document tracking functionality allows you to determine which prospects are reading and absorbing your content the most. You may realize that the prospects who seem disinterested on the phone (a "gut negative" feeling) are those who are most engaged with your document.

It's a middle ground between trusting your gut and trusting the data because it allows you to do both at the same time. With Signalon, you get clear visibility into which stakeholders are actually engaging with your content, helping you separate the lookers from the serious buyers.