Sales analytics is not without its challenges but picking out a quality software is the first step towards tackling the ambiguous beast.

This list is just a starting point, but making sure you find a solution that can offer you these four things will get you on the right path.

Leave a comment below if you’d like us to share more tips like this, and let us know what sales analytics woes or triumphs you have had - we love to hear about other's data experiences.

Here are 4 must-have features in B2B sales analytics software:

#1 Client account analysis

Leadership needs to understand where each client stands. Your sales analytics solution should enable you to scan all accounts for anomalies and opportunities easily, without any manual effort. You will also want to make sure you can view each account’s high-level data to assess its status and see if any SKU sales have dropped off.

Your sales team needs access to this client account sales data as well, but they most likely only need to see their own accounts. Along this vein, your sales analytics software should also have user or role based permissions.

#2 Cloud-enabled for remote work

Especially during a global pandemic, having the flexibility to do sales analysis and reporting on the go, at home, in the office, or while waiting in line to vote, has never been more important.

To be fair, in 2020 it may be more challenging to find a sales analytics tool that isn’t cloud-enabled than one that is, but there are varying levels of ‘cloud-enabled’ so be sure to review its capabilities thoroughly.

#3 Automated analysis aka sales intelligence

Of course your sales reporting needs to be automated and automatically crunch your actual sales transactions. ‘Automated analysis’ takes reporting a step further and has the sales analytics software actually review the data and offer insights without human involvement.

Automated analysis is crucial for sales teams in particular because it is challenging to get sales people gung-ho about a new piece of technology that may or may not make their lives easier (check out our latest post 5 steps for fostering data culture to increase sales team performance to see what we mean).

#4 Goal tracking

Whether you call this ‘selling to a budget’, ‘sales goal setting’, or ‘sales quota’; in order to have #3 you must have #4. Make sure you find a sales analytics software solution than can track your goals and save valuable time.

Goal tracking is so incredibly important for sales teams and yet there are so many analytics software options that don’t have this as a feature or don’t make it customizable. Business are unique and complex and goals may vary drastically depending on industry, size, etc.

Next Steps

If you are in the process of evaluating sales analytics software we have a few assets that may be useful in your search:

• NEW! Sales analytics and reporting use case - how Ri360 works for sales teams and wholesalers

• Ri360 Sales Target - a customized module in Ri360 built for powerful sales analysis, includes a video demo

You can also schedule a 1:1 demo with Chris to get any of your sales analytics questions answered.