Making data deliver
Harnessing analytics makes the difference between sales lost and sales delivered
By Shelly Strom, PBJ Contributing writer
All around the clock, the wired world is giving off signals. Savvy sales and marketing teams are mining those “signals of intention” and marrying them with statistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
It’s the field of “predictive analytics.” And it’s getting a lot of buzz among strategists who have the job of propelling sales growth and new business models.
Think Vacasa, Airbnb, Lyft, Uber, Sling, Amazon — companies most adept at capturing and making sense out of all of that data. And they happen to be category disruptors.
Allison Hartsoe, founder and CEO of Portland-based predictive analytics firm Ambition Data has helped a number of start-ups, including Dagne Dover and Xero Shoes, challenge legacy brands. Established names such as Kohler, Johnson & Johnson, Glaxo Smith Kline and others also have employed Ambition’s strategies for identifying priority customers to clear the path for more sales.
For her, the value of analytics is the insight it can give companies into where they should invest their sales efforts.
"Most companies don’t need to start with the Ferrari of data analytics, they just need to know who their customers are, how they act and what they’re looking for,” Hartsoe said. Companies that aren’t doing that are leaving sales on the table. Read more.
