You’ve implemented the appropriate processes and built the reports and dashboards. Then you ask yourself, “so what?” Asking and answering that question can provide insight that will help you solve problems, set goals, and take advantage of opportunities.

Using sales opportunity data logged within Salesforce, I helped one business unit of a Fortune 100 business gain perspective on its opportunity pipeline – current and past opportunities won and lost. Creating an index of all opportunities and comparing it to won and lost opportunities (see graph below) revealed important insights that enabled sales and product managers to rethink goals and performance:

• Total number of deals lost was slightly larger (1.4x) than the number of deals won.
• The scale of opportunity lost was much larger; for every $1 won, we lost $3.80 in failed opportunities.
• The average opportunity (avg deal) was 2.8 large than the ones won.

By answering ‘so what?’, product and sales managers established reasonable goals and strategies to win larger deals, lose fewer deals overall and report plans to senior leadership. Plus, they were able to reduce ambiguity and doubt – because the data was all there.