Flash Forward：还记得我们称其为“预测”分析时吗？

Isn't it funny how rapidly popular business terms come into vogue, and then serve as a big forehead "L" when their 15 minutes of fame have expired? Much as "big data" has been virtually retired, the moment is soon arriving when prescriptive analytics for B2B sales professionals will have wiped out the current rage around “predictive data.”

Once upon a time, Aberdeen's research looked at analytics from a perspective limited to how Best-in-Class companies generated more accurate sales forecasts. This研究当时实际上很有价值。由于其他业务领导者（例如客户服务，人力资源和供应链VPS）的任务更加精简，即将到来的部门，他们对极度不准确的销售预测的容忍度下降到了bob体育苹果系统下载安装历史最低水平。结果，他们开始向销售业务施加压力，以使人们对原材料，招聘，物流和收入的更现实期望，这些原材料很快就会流入其各个领域。

In response, sales leaders began investing in (mostly cloud-based) solutions that amped up the rudimentary forecasting functionalities of CRM platforms, and learned to rely less on emotions, and more on facts in creating and weighting their forecasts. Predictably (pun intended) top-performing firms were early adopters, and their results evident.

Figure 1: Sales Forecast Accuracy, by Best-in-Class and Sales Cycle Window

此外，研究表明，部署这些解决方案的公司并拥有可预测的销售管道，在检查年度指标变化的各种销售KPI周围取得了更好的业务业绩。

Figure 2: Early Adoption of Sales Analytics Supports Annualized Performance Improvements

Most of these sales analytics engines relied on the significant processing power of what were once leading-edge "big data" and business intelligence products. These products analyzed enormous quantities of data to help sales leaders identify trends such as:

• 哪些产品更有可能由特定类型的买家购买？
• Can I use geographic, demographic, firmographic, and customer buying histories to better isolate which up-sell and cross-sell deals are most likely to close?
• 我们如何确定哪些交易是坏交易，即更可能以无决定性的方式结束，或者更糟的是，没有营利？
• 是否有个人贡献者，渠道合作伙伴，地区或销售团队在预测中更可靠？bob综合博彩下载

寻求协助销售领导人——主要是以前的年代uccessful reps who traditionally had not been the sort of people to spend the day buried in spreadsheets -- with new ways to crunch data, technology solution providers began revving up their algorithms to help produce systems of forecasting weighting. Designing easy-to-use interfaces and dashboards, these applications gave sales operations practitioners enhanced abilities to accept raw forecast data from the field (complete with whatever sandbagging or happy-ears emotion that suited the rep or channel partner), and more objectively spin the dials by relying increasingly on predictive data than on gut feelings.

思考Moneyballfor sales, and the metaphor should make sense.

A Little Pavlov Never Hurt a Sales Team

Thus, predictive analytics grew quite competent in illuminating the challenges of B2B sales managers with data. And yet, it still only tells us things such as: who is better at forecasting deal probabilities, what opportunity will more likely close, when will the contract be returned, and perhaps, even at which specific margin the deal will be finalized.

But, if we seek closure around the common vocabulary of journalism -‒ the five Ws -‒ these platforms are not as strong as they should be around "why." As in, why did a sure-thing opportunity not come through? Was it something the rep said? Something they didn't do? Do we really need to wait for win/loss deal post-mortems to learn how to better influence sales outcomes?

这些问题使我们进入了规范性分析，这是最新的销售有效性技术推动者，该平台不仅计算交易概率，而且规定了与同一数据直接相关的合法教练机会。配额载体的行为修改。

这里的可能性很棒。想象一下这种情况：企业B2B销售代表温迪（Wendy）告诉经理，她的第三季度管道不够饱满，决定提升她目前的一场勘探对话，即ACME小部件，以在CRM中“机会”。这给了温迪可能不喜欢的形式和内部宣传感，但由于需要满足老板，她以55,000美元的价格达成协议，估计截止日期为8月1日。

如果CRM与真正的规定分析平台集成在一起，则销售部队自动化（SFA）系统不仅会在Toto中接受Wendy的交易。相反，它提醒她，尽管她的ACME交易现在已被官方销售数据系统接受，但价值和时机实际上为35,000美元，10月15日。“什么……？！”温迪大声疾呼。“我在八月初需要$ 55K来填充我的烟斗！”

这项机器人，冷酷的交易减少背后的理由和逻辑是什么？整体SFA“知道”温迪的交易并不像她认为的那样强大，因为有许多单一或组合变量。这些数据发现中的一些可能无法控制，例如将她提供给ACME的特定产品的历史弱点，或者Acme在拖延谈判或价格低下的Acme自己的历史上。

但是，其他人则为arear而来的专业销售教练提供了即时的机会。例如，也许她自己的预测历史表现出过度的信心，或者她还没有吸收她公司所知道的相关产品培训，从而带来了更好的销售胜利。可能是她尚未注册有关ACME的足够的bant标准，或者在向买家承诺之前，她没有检查库存或生产能力。这些或其他一百个潜在的弱点意味着温迪不会在比尔·贝里希克（Bill Belichick）的新英格兰爱国者队（New England Patriots）上持续很长时间，因为她根本没有做工作。或者，至少做得很好，以赢得独立预测的权利。

Wrapping up this not-so-fictional tale, after Wendy calms down, she actually addresses her problem -- "Now I have to go find more pipeline!" -- with a solution, that of improving the Acme deal by more substantive sales preparation, elevating other opportunities similarly, or both.

Everyone knows that sales is a zero-sum game, with better pipelines resulting in more quotas met and fewer missed soccer games. The prescriptive analytics capabilities behind this tale speak to how proven sales best practices within the enterprise can be leveraged and effectively scaled in concert with the need to provide在个人贡献者级别的教练。

Let's Go to the Tape

阿伯丁研究的身体支持这一主张。2014年9月调查的数据Sheldon Cooper, Sales Whisperer: Applying the Science of Data to the Art of Selling揭示了49％的一流公司提供“针对特定交易，机会或帐户的实时指导”，而行业平均水平的44％，只有32％的兰加德公司。这些最佳表现者通过部署销售技术来支持这一承诺more frequently than under-performing survey respondents,such as portal-based libraries of marketing, sales, and training content, customizable sales playbooks, virtual or on-demand learning tools, and internal social collaboration platforms.

Check out the full research reporthere。