Enterprise media companies have too many blind spots around seller performance and pipelines. It’s the result of having to use disparate systems, the inability to access data, and a lack of capabilities to deliver it accurately and efficiently. In local TV sales, the absence of this data causes you to be reactive, not proactive, in understanding how salespeople are doing and if you will hit budgets.
For sales managers of large local media companies, these insights have been out of reach for various reasons. Data isn’t accessible or up to date. You may not even have a mechanism to change this. Other issues exist because you have information in multiple systems, so aggregating and identifying insights is manual and time-consuming.
However, you’ll find that innovation is here in local TV sales technology. This big question is what software providers are creating to improve your visibility.
What Kind of Performance and Pipeline Reporting Do You Need?
When evaluating your current technology or seeking a new platform, you want to ensure you have performance and pipeline data functionality. Reporting is much more efficient and accurate if the data is within one solution. Without this, you’ll be chasing the information, which means you can’t forecast or have a true picture of seller performance.
You’ll gain this visibility with these seller performance and pipeline reporting capabilities:
- Committed orders
- How numbers compare to targets
- Forecasting reports that analyze sales
- Exception reporting to ensure sales activities occur within mandated criteria
- Monitoring salesperson performance
Having access to this data and reporting is critical for sales managers, but not all technology makes it easy. You should have this readily available, but sales managers spend a lot of time on reporting, up to 16.7%, according to a media sales survey. If reporting is inefficient, you’ll devote too much energy here that you don’t have when running an enterprise sales team. Instead, you want to do more important things — like take action based on the data!
Empowered by Data, You Can Make Better Decisions
Data is only valuable if it’s actionable. It must be accurate, accessible and available in real time. You must expect that your sales technology delivers this; otherwise, it’s meaningless. So, how can it help you with decision making?
Seller Performance Data Insights to Action
Tracking seller performance is crucial to meeting budget and knowing how to support each individual. You can deduce who is on pace to hit their numbers and who isn’t. You may also find other bits of information helpful, like the size of deals and types of advertisers. With this information, you can make both acknowledgments and interventions.
First, it allows you to acknowledge your high performers. This matters because it’s something employees want from their employers. It can improve their job satisfaction and keep them loyal.
Second, you can address those who are struggling to hit numbers. It would enable you to discuss your concerns early and build a plan together to get them back on track.
Deal Performance Data Insights to Action
Another component of performance reporting is having a holistic view of past and current deals. You can identify which programming needs more attention from sales. Additionally, you can see who is spending (and isn’t). For example, you can look into which companies bought advertising in the past quarter or year but haven’t renewed. Visibility on deals also lets you know which ones you must close to meet budget.
Pipeline Data Insights to Action
The other part of this reporting is having clarity around your sales pipeline by seeing deals at all stages. With this, you can forecast the upcoming quarters with data, not assumptions or rough estimates. It can help you determine where you are falling short in relation to targets, so you can pivot and adjust as necessary. Your finance team will appreciate that forecasting is more precise.
Having accessible and actionable data is the key ingredient to making more informed decisions. If it’s all in one system, you don’t have to go back and forth and can view everything from a dashboard. So, where can you find all these features?
Marketron REV Powers Data-Driven Decisions
REV is a powerful and comprehensive sales platform for enterprise media companies. It uses data to ensure you have all the facts on seller performance and pipelines, and it gives you customizable dashboards and the ability to export your data. These reports are just one part of the solution revolutionizing local TV sales.
The future of local TV sales will be data driven, and REV is the technology to enable it. You can learn more about how REV provides many types of actionable data by watching our on-demand webinar, Data Is Your Crystal Ball: How It Guides the Modern TV Seller.
