Gartner Survey Finds Sales Analytics Has Less Influence on Sales Performance Than What Leadership Expected

Eighty-four percent of sales leaders agreed that sales analytics has had less influence on sales performance than what leadership expected, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc.

Gartner surveyed 303 sales leaders in July 2023 to understand the current state of sales analytics and the metrics used to drive insight generation and behavior change within sales functions.

“With analytics comes the expectation of transformative decision making, but the reality is that many organizations struggle to produce actionable insights regarding their most important decisions,” said Kelly Fischbein, Senior Principal, Research in the Gartner Sales Practice.

When asked to identify barriers to analytics success, data privacy concerns or regulations (45% of respondents), poor data quality (44%) and limited cross-functional collaboration (44%) were cited as the top three reasons (see Figure 1).

“The net result is compounding complexity: More uncertainty creates more demand for analytics, which creates demand for more data, which in turn presents analytics teams with challenging operational barriers,” said Fischbein.

Address Influence with CSO Involvement

To address the disconnect regarding sales analytics and influence on sales performance, CSOs must mutually define analytics value proposition with their operations leaders. The Gartner survey went on to find that CSO-led analytics are 2.3 times more likely to achieve higher forecast accuracy than non-CSO led analytics. CSO-led analytics are also 1.8 times more likely to exceed customer acquisition goals than non-CSO led analytics.

“To achieve higher strategic influence of analytics, CSOs must lead when it comes to aligning analytics strategies to sales objectives and communicating insights from analytics,” continued Fischbein.

To achieve this change in behavior, Gartner suggests CSOs:

• Deploy a decision driven analytics approach to prioritize the analytics that can have the most influence on the decisions that have the greatest impact.
• Build specialization in their analytics organization that aligns with their top priorities.
• Analyze seller performance metrics comparatively to drive actionability.

Gartner clients can read more in “Amplify the Impact of Sales Analytics.” Additional information can be found in the complimentary webinar, Amplify Sales Analytics Impact to Drive Future Business Value.

About the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference

The Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference is taking place May 21-22, 2024 in Las Vegas, providing sales leaders with the latest research on AI, sales talent, and customer buying behavior. Follow news and updates coming out of the conference on the Gartner Newsroom and on X and LinkedIn using #GartnerSales. 

About Gartner for Sales Leaders

Gartner for Sales Leaders provides heads of sales and their teams with the insights, advice and tools they need to address mission-critical priorities amid mounting pressures to drive growth through new and existing customers. With extensive qualitative and quantitative research, Gartner for Sales Leaders helps sales teams combat commoditization and price-based purchasing, develop critical manager and seller skills, elevate the value of sales interactions, unlock existing growth potential, and optimize sales force enablement. Follow news and update from the Gartner Sales practice on X and LinkedIn using #GartnerSales. Members of the media can find additional information and insights in the Gartner Sales Newsroom.

Information Technology

About Gartner

Gartner delivers actionable, objective insight that drives smarter decisions and stronger performance on an organization’s mission-critical priorities.