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• What is Sales Analytics? [Benefits, Types, and Metrics to Track]

Analytics has become an integral part of life, from finding the shortest route to work to forecasting stock market trends. 

Analyzing previous trends ensures that businesses always make the right decision. And as the scale of the decision and its impact magnifies, more robust analytics need to take over. The gut feeling cannot cut it anymore.   

According to McKinsey, businesses that rely on data to make decisions are 19 times more likely to be profitable. It’s no surprise that sales, a number-driven aspect of business, benefits from the right analytics. If your goal is fast and sustainable growth, your sales team must make quick and accurate decisions to improve its performance.  

Sales analytics isn’t a new term. Businesses have been using it for years to optimize various steps of the sales cycle . But most of them are just at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to intelligent sales analytics.  

This article aims to help you identify appropriate sales analytics to resolve business challenges.   

What is Sales Analytics?

Sales analytics refers to the use of technology to collect and use sales data to derive actionable insights. It is used to identify, optimize, and forecast sales. It uses different metrics and KPIs to plan an efficient sales model that generates higher revenue for the business. Here’s how Prashant Ahlawat, Vice President – Analytics and Transformation, at LeadSquared, defines sales analytics:

“Sales analytics is a compass for your sales teams. It guides you towards growth using tools that track past data and current performance against goals. The analytics reports then help you plan targets in the future.”  

Sales involves many stages with their own set of metrics. There’s always an abundance of data to track, but it’s hard to make sense of it every time.  

While you may want to use data to find gaps in your sales processes, it’s next to impossible without the right tools.  

One such tool is sales analytics. It can help you identify gaps and improve your sales processes.  

Let’s take a closer look at it.  

Benefits of Sales Analytics

1. Boost sales productivity  

Sales reps need to always be on their toes to achieve results. Sales processes are often complex. You’ll find several hurdles between lead gen to closing a sale .  

Data analytics in sales help managers decrease the sales cycle length by identifying the areas of improvement. Along with an average 20% increase in sales productivity , analytics also helps salespeople decrease leakages in the sales pipeline . 

2. Identify new sales opportunities   

As a business grows, products evolve, new sales opportunities emerge. Tracking sales data helps enterprises understand the product fitment across industries and regions. The historical data allows salespeople to define their customer base and introduce opportunities to upsell and cross-sell .  

3. Plan effective sales targets  

  Sales data—deals closed, qualified opportunities, length of sales cycles—captured over a year or even a quarter, can significantly improve the way businesses strategize their sales targets .  

Predictive analysis helps forecast sales revenues and set individual targets based on your sales team’s performance.  

4. Improve customer acquisition  

Personalized customer journeys are hard to build without insights into customer behavior. The customer’s journey has multiple touchpoints , which can be improved by tracking factors like time on a certain website, tone during the call, and response rate. Customer analytics help salespeople make relevant recommendations, and over 44% of businesses use it to acquire new customers.  

5. Incentivise sales teams   

Incentives are the biggest motivator for sales teams. But you can’t reward their performance without accurate records.  

Recording sales activities and their outcomes help businesses incentivize their sales teams fairly. Analytics simplify payroll management and help managers choose an appropriate sales commission structure .  

6. Increase customer retention   

Every business aims to improve their Customer Lifetime Value because acquiring a new customer is 5X more expensive than retaining one. And that’s precisely what sales analytics help you achieve! Diagnosing the possible drop-off stages and taking preventive measures brings down the number of churned accounts. 

So, now you know the benefits of sales analytics. And the first step to achieve them is to use the right type of sales analytics that align with your sales goals .  

7 Types of Sales Analytics [+ Metrics to Track!]

The scope of sales analysis is vast.  

But it all boils down to choosing the right analytics and metrics that help you achieve your business goals.  

Business analytics fall under four broad categories: 

• Descriptive  
• Diagnostic   
• Predictive  
• Prescriptive 

However, sales analytics are more specific to a business’ sales process. Let’s look at the 7 essential sales analytics and relevant metrics under each type.   

1. Market Research Analytics

Marketing research involves deriving data related to target customers, well-performing regions, and untapped markets. It is vital to launch a new product and begin sales in new geos.   

The metrics to track are: 

• Targetable customer base 
• Region-wise sales 
• Competitor performance and market share  
• Demand for the product 
• Sales performance in the previous quarter (Especially if you’re looking to ramp up sales in a certain region) 

2. Product Sales Analytics

Product Sales Analytics can be highly effective for businesses with multiple or seasonal product offerings. It considers the performance of every product or service that the company offers. It helps the sales team identify the products to focus on based on the revenue and sales targets . The analytics can be tracked for a certain timeframe and demographic. 

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) for the product/service (NPS score= %promoters – %detractors, where promoters rate your product 8-10 and detractors rate it 0-7 out of 10) 
• The number of active users over a daily and monthly timeframe.  
• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR = Average revenue per account x Total number of accounts) 
• % Sales volume ((Units of individual product sold x 100) ÷ Total units of all products sold) 
• Repeat buys per product (Repeat Purchase Rate = (Repeat customers x 100) ÷ Total customers) 
• Minimum, maximum, and average selling price per product 

Comparing these metrics across different products/services helps you ramp up sales or drop certain products. 

3. Sales Effectiveness Analytics

Almost every business would want to track its sales effectiveness. The extent and type of analytics used to monitor teams vary across different industries and businesses.  

Tracking productivity and sales effectiveness on a daily, monthly, and quarterly basis help in identifying your team’s scope of improvement.  

The metrics to track differ as per the targets that the business has set and its sales workflow. B2Cs usually have a higher sales velocity and shorter sales cycles than B2Bs. But in general, here are a few metrics that B2Bs and B2Cs rely on.   

Sales effectiveness metrics for B2B businesses 

• Target achievement analytics (Your targets can be conversions or revenue dependent. For revenue dependent targets, % Achievement = (Revenue generated x 100) ÷ Target revenue). And for conversion dependent targets, % Achievement = (Number of deals closed x 100) ÷ Target conversions.)) 
• Number of meetings generated  
• Ratio of leads to qualified meetings  
• Ratio of qualified meetings to conversions  
• Attrition rate (Usually calculated for team managers, Attrition Rate = (No. Of employees who left the team x 100) ÷ Average no. of team members) 
• Customer feedback  
• Sales and CRM hygiene  

Sales effectiveness metrics for B2C businesses 

• Daily talk time  
• Weekly and monthly sales conversions (Conversion Rate = (Conversions x 100) ÷ Total opportunities) 
• Turnaround time  
• Lead to opportunity ratio  
• Total revenue generated (Total Revenue = Number of products sold X Cost per unit) 
• Customer feedback 
• Length of the sales cycle   
• Sales and CRM hygiene 

4. Sales Pipeline Analytics

The journey from a qualified prospect to a customer is mapped in the sales pipeline . But each stage in the sales pipeline can turn into a drop-off point if it isn’t properly tracked and analyzed. Sales pipeline analytics help you determine what slows down the conversions and what you can do to speed it up.  

The metrics to track are:  

• Conversion rate by sales funnel stage 
• Pipeline to conversions ratio  
• Weighted value of pipeline (Weighted value = Probability of Closing x Deal Value, where the probability depends on the stage of the pipeline, such as 50% for the negotiation stage) 
• Sales Pipeline Velocity (Sales Pipeline velocity= (Number of deals in pipeline x Average deal size) ÷ Average sales cycle length) 
• Pipeline Coverage (Number of opportunities in pipeline for given period ÷ quota period) 
• Deal Drop-off by Stage  
• Sales Rep Pipeline Performance  

(Also read: 32 Sales KPIs Every Manager Should Measure to learn more about the different sales performance metrics in detail) 

6. Predictive Analytics for Sales Strategy

Every business aims to grow faster, witness higher conversions, and create an unmatched revenue stream. Hours of planning, strategizing, and forecasting go into realizing these goals, but there’s no guarantee they’ll be met. Creating a sales strategy using analytics can’t assure the desired results, but the chances that you will meet them shoot up.     Forecasting growth while keeping all the variables in mind is highly complicated. Sales data from the past acts as a benchmark and every year the stakes are increased to ensure business growth. 

Here are some of the metrics that help you set suitable targets for your teams:  

• Year-over-year (YoY) growth ([(Current Year’s Revenue – Previous Year’s Revenue) x 100] ÷ Previous Year’s Revenue) 
• People level analytics to assess team’s performance  
• Lead Scoring , which helps you prioritize warm leads for faster conversions  
• Sales Cycle length (Sum of the Number of days it took to close each deal ÷ Total Number of deals) 
• Win rate (Deals closed ÷ Total Number of deals) 
• Sales Linearity assesses if the progression of leads in the pipeline is as predicted 
• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) conversion rate 

7. Churn Analytics

Churned accounts can be discouraging for your sales teams. Also, it brings a steep drop in your annual revenue.  

Churn analytics help you identify touchpoints with a higher drop-off rate and the accounts with a high churn probability. A lot of the churn metrics are qualitative or based on customer behavior. With this information, your salespeople can intervene to prevent churn.  

The churn analytics can be divided into two categories, predictive and post-mortem. The metrics to track are interdependent for both these categories. 

Metrics that predict churn:

• Low user activity  
• Slow response rate 
• No opportunities to upsell  
• Delayed payments  

Once the account is churned, it is important to evaluate the factors that caused the churn to avoid them for other accounts. It is also known as the post-mortem of the churn. 

Metrics to analyze the churn:

• Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer (LTV = Lifetime Value = Average Value of Sale × Number of Transactions × Retention Time Period) 
• Churn rate ((Lost Customers ÷ Total Customers at the Start of Time Period) x 100) 
• Customer and revenue churn (% Change in number of customers and annual revenue because of the churn)  

8. Marketing analytics

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) have high intent and can be easily converted into a customer by the sales team. Employing the right marketing analytics ensure that leads keep flowing into the sales funnel .  

Usually, many campaigns and marketing activities run in parallel. Figuring out which strategy generates the highest ROI and brings in the greatest number of leads is extremely important. So, analyzing your lead sources and the effectiveness of each campaign helps the marketing team restructure their budgets to improve the volume of quality leads.   

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) (Customer Acquisition Cost = Cost of sales and marketing ÷ number of new customers acquired) 
• Lead to acquisition ratio (Lifetime Value (LTV) ÷ Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)) 
• Traffic by source  
• Number of Market Qualified Leads  
• ROI from each Lead Source  
• Lead to Demo Conversions  
• Average Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Position 

Now that we’ve discussed all the types of sales analysis methods, mapping them to your business analytics becomes extremely easy. This table sums it all up.  

You can bookmark this page or download this  Sales Analytics Guide  to share with your team. Sales analytics carry the power to transform your business However, the general notion is analytics is a high-end and complicated matter that’ll take up a lot of investment.  

But this isn’t true; you just need to identify what works for your business.  

Getting Started with Sales Analytics

“Any business with a sales team needs sales analytics, irrespective of the industry or the complexity of your product. All KPIs that you set for your teams should be tracked and analyzed, even if you use the most basic reports.”    Murali Krishna, Vice President – Sales, LeadSquared  

The biggest deterrents to using advanced sales analytics tools are the cost and the need for a well-defined sales process. However, sales analysis doesn’t always need a tool.   

For businesses with small teams or a short and simple sales process, people-level analytics and sales effectiveness metrics should suffice. The business can effortlessly record and analyze this data on Excel sheets.   

As the size of your sales team increases, Excel sheets begin to break. The amount of data increases exponentially and only a good sales analytics software can meet the requirements. 

A sales analytics software is also essential if you have multiple product offerings that need to be mapped to customers.   

“While a few industries can make do without a sales analytics software, it’s a basic requirement for others such as edtech, real estate, banking and insurance, manufacturing, and e-commerce.”    Pritika Khorana, Regional Sales Manager, LeadSquared 

If you’re just getting started with sales analytics, the following courses and books could help!  

Sales Analytics Courses:  

1. LinkedIn’s Business Analytics: Sales Data  2.   Sales Analytics Beginner Complete Course by Udemy   3. Wharton’s Business Analytics  

Sales Analytics Books:  

1. The Power of Sales Analytics by A. Zoltners, P. Sinha, and S. Lorimer  2. Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die by E. Siegel  3. Business Analytics: Data Analysis & Decision Making by S. Christian Albright and Wayne L. Winston 

The right sales analytics can be a game-changer for your business. That’s exactly how Tricoci University of Beauty Culture, a Chicago-based cosmetology school, increased their process efficiency by 75%.  

Here’s a little peek into their sales analysis journey with LeadSquared.   

How Tricoci University Increased Process Efficiency by 75%

Tricoci University has 16 campuses spread across Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. The school takes pride on its people-centric approach to preparing the leading beauty professionals of tomorrow.   

An absence of sales and marketing analytics made it hard for them to improve their enrolment process quickly. Here’s when they chose LeadSquared as their CRM tool to meet their enrolment goals.   

The sales analytics journey will be impactful only when the data trends are visualized and reported. There are a few ways to go about this. You can either integrate your sales data with a visualization and reporting tool—like Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, or Qlikview— or you can opt for a CRM with reporting tools.   

Both these options work great for businesses, but a CRM with sales reporting abilities is more convenient and financially feasible. LeadSquared CRM , with its advanced reporting tools, is a one-stop solution to track and visualize sales data.   

Watch our Masterclass on LeadSquared Reports & Analytics to understand the different types of reports that you can generate on the LeadSquared platform.  

Every business intends to use its sales analytics software for different purposes. And there are many that you can choose from.

Key Features of a Sales Analytics Tool

A sales analytics tool tracks and analyzes sales data to make actionable improvements. But choosing the right tool for sales analysis is imperative. Here’s a checklist of the features that you should evaluate before you purchase a new sales analytics software.

1. Visualization Capabilities  

The tool should be able to visualize your sales data in every way possible–charts, tables, graphs, or tables. It’s important to note that the visualization must be real-time and easy to generate and access.  

  2. Scalability  

Can the tool handle the data when your team and the number of leads increase by 10X or 15X? If you aim to grow rapidly, it’s important for the tool to scale along with your business.  

3. Platform Security  

Loss of data, whether it is process-related or sensitive lead information, can affect your business negatively. The platform should be secure enough to prevent data leaks and the loss of important information. 

4. Uptime of the system  

Sales data is generated by the minute. So, your sales analytics software must always stay operational. The core engine should be robust enough to carry out all the calculations and handle reports even when lead volume peaks.  

5. Short term and long-term data insights  

The insights must help you make decisions both on a short and long term. For instance, on a daily/weekly and on a monthly/quarterly/yearly basis. So, the software must consistently record and update the data. 

I hope this article helps you streamline your sales analytics strategy to resolve any business challenges you may face. To sum it up, sales analysis is all about putting your data to work to improve sales outcomes. With the right tool, sales analytics can completely transform your business. 

A CRM is one such tool to track sales data, record it, and derive insights from it. If you’re looking for a CRM with advanced monitoring and reporting capabilities, you should give LeadSquared a shot! 

Book a demo to know more about LeadSquared’s Sales CRM.

Sales analytics is used to identify, optimize, and forecast sales. It uses different metrics and KPIs to strategize a sales model that is efficient and generates high revenue for a business.  

Sales data that is tracked on a CRM can be used to generate insightful reports. These reports help you boost sales productivity, increase customer retention , improve sales strategy and generate a high lead volume. The CRM analytics also highlight the products and markets that your sales team must focus on.

Business analytics fall under four broad categories—descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive. They take both qualitative and quantitative factors into account and help your business achieve rapid growth.

Kritika is a content writer at LeadSquared. She loves reading and is trying to learn more about sales. Through her writing, she wants to make sales easier for everyone. You can connect with her on LinkedIn or write to her at [email protected].

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9 Key stages in your marketing research process

You can conduct your own marketing research. Follow these steps, add your own flair, knowledge and creativity, and you’ll have bespoke research to be proud of.

Marketing research is the term used to cover the concept, development, placement and evolution of your product or service, its growing customer base and its branding – starting with brand awareness , and progressing to (everyone hopes) brand equity . Like any research, it needs a robust process to be credible and useful.

Marketing research uses four essential key factors known as the ‘marketing mix’ , or the Four Ps of Marketing :

• Product (goods or service)
• Price ( how much the customer pays )
• Place (where the product is marketed)
• Promotion (such as advertising and PR)

These four factors need to work in harmony for a product or service to be successful in its marketplace.

The marketing research process – an overview

A typical marketing research process is as follows:

• Identify an issue, discuss alternatives and set out research objectives
• Develop a research program
• Choose a sample
• Gather information
• Gather data
• Organize and analyze information and data
• Present findings
• Make research-based decisions
• Take action based on insights

Step 1: Defining the marketing research problem

Defining a problem is the first step in the research process. In many ways, research starts with a problem facing management. This problem needs to be understood, the cause diagnosed, and solutions developed.

However, most management problems are not always easy to research, so they must first be translated into research problems. Once you approach the problem from a research angle, you can find a solution. For example, “sales are not growing” is a management problem, but translated into a research problem, it becomes “ why are sales not growing?” We can look at the expectations and experiences of several groups : potential customers, first-time buyers, and repeat purchasers. We can question whether the lack of sales is due to:

• Poor expectations that lead to a general lack of desire to buy, or
• Poor performance experience and a lack of desire to repurchase.

This, then, is the difference between a management problem and a research problem. Solving management problems focuses on actions: Do we advertise more? Do we change our advertising message? Do we change an under-performing product configuration? And if so, how?

Defining research problems, on the other hand, focus on the whys and hows, providing the insights you need to solve your management problem.

Step 2: Developing a research program: method of inquiry

The scientific method is the standard for investigation. It provides an opportunity for you to use existing knowledge as a starting point, and proceed impartially.

The scientific method includes the following steps:

• Define a problem
• Develop a hypothesis
• Make predictions based on the hypothesis
• Devise a test of the hypothesis
• Conduct the test
• Analyze the results

This terminology is similar to the stages in the research process. However, there are subtle differences in the way the steps are performed:

• the scientific research method is objective and fact-based, using quantitative research and impartial analysis
• the marketing research process can be subjective, using opinion and qualitative research, as well as personal judgment as you collect and analyze data

Step 3: Developing a research program: research method

As well as selecting a method of inquiry (objective or subjective), you must select a research method . There are two primary methodologies that can be used to answer any research question:

• Experimental research : gives you the advantage of controlling extraneous variables and manipulating one or more variables that influence the process being implemented.
• Non-experimental research : allows observation but not intervention – all you do is observe and report on your findings.

Step 4: Developing a research program: research design

Research design is a plan or framework for conducting marketing research and collecting data. It is defined as the specific methods and procedures you use to get the information you need.

There are three core types of marketing research designs: exploratory, descriptive, and causal . A thorough marketing research process incorporates elements of all of them.

Exploratory marketing research

This is a starting point for research. It’s used to reveal facts and opinions about a particular topic, and gain insight into the main points of an issue. Exploratory research is too much of a blunt instrument to base conclusive business decisions on, but it gives the foundation for more targeted study. You can use secondary research materials such as trade publications, books, journals and magazines and primary research using qualitative metrics, that can include open text surveys, interviews and focus groups.

Descriptive marketing research

This helps define the business problem or issue so that companies can make decisions, take action and monitor progress. Descriptive research is naturally quantitative – it needs to be measured and analyzed statistically , using more targeted surveys and questionnaires. You can use it to capture demographic information , evaluate a product or service for market, and monitor a target audience’s opinion and behaviors. Insights from descriptive research can inform conclusions about the market landscape and the product’s place in it.

Causal marketing research

This is useful to explore the cause and effect relationship between two or more variables. Like descriptive research , it uses quantitative methods, but it doesn’t merely report findings; it uses experiments to predict and test theories about a product or market. For example, researchers may change product packaging design or material, and measure what happens to sales as a result.

Step 5: Choose your sample

Your marketing research project will rarely examine an entire population. It’s more practical to use a sample - a smaller but accurate representation of the greater population. To design your sample, you’ll need to answer these questions:

• Which base population is the sample to be selected from? Once you’ve established who your relevant population is (your research design process will have revealed this), you have a base for your sample. This will allow you to make inferences about a larger population.
• What is the method (process) for sample selection? There are two methods of selecting a sample from a population:

1. Probability sampling : This relies on a random sampling of everyone within the larger population.

2. Non-probability sampling : This is based in part on the investigator’s judgment, and often uses convenience samples, or by other sampling methods that do not rely on probability.

• What is your sample size? This important step involves cost and accuracy decisions. Larger samples generally reduce sampling error and increase accuracy, but also increase costs. Find out your perfect sample size with our calculator .

Step 6: Gather data

Your research design will develop as you select techniques to use. There are many channels for collecting data, and it’s helpful to differentiate it into O-data (Operational) and X-data (Experience):

• O-data is your business’s hard numbers like costs, accounting, and sales. It tells you what has happened, but not why.
• X-data gives you insights into the thoughts and emotions of the people involved: employees, customers, brand advocates.

When you combine O-data with X-data, you’ll be able to build a more complete picture about success and failure - you’ll know why. Maybe you’ve seen a drop in sales (O-data) for a particular product. Maybe customer service was lacking, the product was out of stock, or advertisements weren’t impactful or different enough: X-data will reveal the reason why those sales dropped. So, while differentiating these two data sets is important, when they are combined, and work with each other, the insights become powerful.

With mobile technology, it has become easier than ever to collect data. Survey research has come a long way since market researchers conducted face-to-face, postal, or telephone surveys. You can run research through:

• Social media ( polls and listening )

Another way to collect data is by observation. Observing a customer’s or company’s past or present behavior can predict future purchasing decisions. Data collection techniques for predicting past behavior can include market segmentation , customer journey mapping and brand tracking .

Regardless of how you collect data, the process introduces another essential element to your research project: the importance of clear and constant communication .

And of course, to analyze information from survey or observation techniques, you must record your results . Gone are the days of spreadsheets. Feedback from surveys and listening channels can automatically feed into AI-powered analytics engines and produce results, in real-time, on dashboards.

Step 7: Analysis and interpretation

The words ‘ statistical analysis methods ’ aren’t usually guaranteed to set a room alight with excitement, but when you understand what they can do, the problems they can solve and the insights they can uncover, they seem a whole lot more compelling.

Statistical tests and data processing tools can reveal:

• Whether data trends you see are meaningful or are just chance results
• Your results in the context of other information you have
• Whether one thing affecting your business is more significant than others
• What your next research area should be
• Insights that lead to meaningful changes

There are several types of statistical analysis tools used for surveys. You should make sure that the ones you choose:

• Work on any platform - mobile, desktop, tablet etc.
• Integrate with your existing systems
• Are easy to use with user-friendly interfaces, straightforward menus, and automated data analysis
• Incorporate statistical analysis so you don’t just process and present your data, but refine it, and generate insights and predictions.

Here are some of the most common tools:

• Benchmarking : a way of taking outside factors into account so that you can adjust the parameters of your research. It ‘levels the playing field’ – so that your data and results are more meaningful in context. And gives you a more precise understanding of what’s happening.
• Regression analysis : this is used for working out the relationship between two (or more) variables. It is useful for identifying the precise impact of a change in an independent variable.
• T-test is used for comparing two data groups which have different mean values. For example, do women and men have different mean heights?
• Analysis of variance (ANOVA) Similar to the T-test, ANOVA is a way of testing the differences between three or more independent groups to see if they’re statistically significant.
• Cluster analysis : This organizes items into groups, or clusters, based on how closely associated they are.
• Factor analysis: This is a way of condensing many variables into just a few, so that your research data is less unwieldy to work with.
• Conjoint analysis : this will help you understand and predict why people make the choices they do. It asks people to make trade-offs when making decisions, just as they do in the real world, then analyzes the results to give the most popular outcome.
• Crosstab analysis : this is a quantitative market research tool used to analyze ‘categorical data’ - variables that are different and mutually exclusive, such as: ‘men’ and ‘women’, or ‘under 30’ and ‘over 30’.
• Text analysis and sentiment analysis : Analyzing human language and emotions is a rapidly-developing form of data processing, assigning positive, negative or neutral sentiment to customer messages and feedback.

Stats IQ can perform the most complicated statistical tests at the touch of a button using our online survey software , or data from other sources. Learn more about Stats iQ now .

Step 8: The marketing research results

Your marketing research process culminates in the research results. These should provide all the information the stakeholders and decision-makers need to understand the project.

The results will include:

• all your information
• a description of your research process
• the results
• conclusions
• recommended courses of action

They should also be presented in a form, language and graphics that are easy to understand, with a balance between completeness and conciseness, neither leaving important information out or allowing it to get so technical that it overwhelms the readers.

Traditionally, you would prepare two written reports:

• a technical report , discussing the methods, underlying assumptions and the detailed findings of the research project
• a summary report , that summarizes the research process and presents the findings and conclusions simply.

There are now more engaging ways to present your findings than the traditional PowerPoint presentations, graphs, and face-to-face reports:

• Live, interactive dashboards for sharing the most important information, as well as tracking a project in real time.
• Results-reports visualizations – tables or graphs with data visuals on a shareable slide deck
• Online presentation technology, such as Prezi
• Visual storytelling with infographics
• A single-page executive summary with key insights
• A single-page stat sheet with the top-line stats

You can also make these results shareable so that decision-makers have all the information at their fingertips.

Step 9 Turn your insights into action

Insights are one thing, but they’re worth very little unless they inform immediate, positive action. Here are a few examples of how you can do this:

• Stop customers leaving – negative sentiment among VIP customers gets picked up; the customer service team contacts the customers, resolves their issues, and avoids churn .
• Act on important employee concerns – you can set certain topics, such as safety, or diversity and inclusion to trigger an automated notification or Slack message to HR. They can rapidly act to rectify the issue.
• Address product issues – maybe deliveries are late, maybe too many products are faulty. When product feedback gets picked up through Smart Conversations, messages can be triggered to the delivery or product teams to jump on the problems immediately.
• Improve your marketing effectiveness - Understand how your marketing is being received by potential customers, so you can find ways to better meet their needs
• Grow your brand - Understand exactly what consumers are looking for, so you can make sure that you’re meeting their expectations

Download now: 8 Innovations to Modernize Market Research

Scott Smith

Scott Smith, Ph.D. is a contributor to the Qualtrics blog.

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The Ultimate Guide to Sales Analysis Reports

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Enjoy reading this blog post written by our experts or partners.

If you want to see what Databox can do for you, click here .

If you were to ask the most successful CEOs in the world to create a list of the most important areas in their companies, they will all inevitably have the same thing at the top of the list – Sales.

This isn’t surprising. After all, sales drive revenue, and improving the sales process should always be the number one priority in any business, no matter its size.

However, analyzing and then optimizing your sales process can hardly be done without the help of additional tools. And that’s where Sales analysis reports come in.

Sales analysis reports provide you with an overview of all the significant data and metrics related to your sales process. They also make sales process optimization a lot easier since you will be able to identify all the strengths and weaknesses much quicker.

In this article, we are going to walk you through what sales analysis reports are, how to create them, explain their benefits, and show you how to analyze the data you acquire.

What Is a Sales Analysis Report?

How are sales analysis reports helpful, what should be included in a sales analysis report, types of sales analysis reports, how do you analyze sales results, how to write a sales analysis report in 6 steps, improve sales analysis and forecasting with databox.

A sales analysis report is a document that includes all of the most important data of your business’s sales process and provides you with a complete overview of your sales trends, volume, and overall sales activities.

Some of the metrics included in sales analysis reports are:

• Sales trends
• Lead conversion rate
• Number of leads in the sales pipeline
• Historic sales data
• Sales team performance
• Product assessment

The main goal of this report is to inform you whether there is an increase or reduction in sales. Once you finish analyzing the data in a sales analysis report, you will be able to create better strategies, avoid unnecessary costs, and identify which areas in the sales process need to be optimized.

From new startups to huge corporations, sales analysis reports are an indispensable practice for all companies. During a fiscal year, sales managers will often turn to sales analysis reports in order to come up with efficient strategies going forward.

Now that you understand what sales analysis reports are, you might be wondering about the exact benefits that they bring to the table.

We will break them down one by one so you understand just how crucial these reports are to your company.

Show Actual and Projected Sales

Evaluate product demand, assess market prices, provide customer analysis, improve sales strategies.

It is also crucial to know the main differences between analytics vs. reporting . By doing to, you can ensure that you use the appropriate methods and techniques to meet your reporting goals and provide actionable insights to stakeholders.

Sales analysis reports provide you with an insight into the actual sales that occurred in a specific time period. You can filter this either quarterly, yearly, weekly, or even daily.

Different companies have different data sets contained in the report. For example, big companies mainly focus on subsidiary, division, or regional data sets, while smaller businesses tend to be more interested in data categorized by location or product. When it comes to specialized businesses, they usually incorporate general sales data sets.

One of the main reasons why managers use sales analysis reports is to find new market opportunities that they can exploit and improve sales volume.

Identifying these new opportunities can be a lot easier once you figure out the peak periods of your business and compare actual sales to projected sales.

Related : Sales Report Templates For Daily, Weekly Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly Statements (Sourced from 40+ Sales Pros)

Another thing that a sales analysis report can provide you with is an evaluation of your business’ product demand and whether there are any issues with it.

For instance, if there is a lasting sales decline for a particular product, there is most likely some type of problem with it.

One of the reasons may be that your competition has a better offer for the same product. However, if this is the case with most of your products, it may be time to completely reconstruct your brand.

In situations where the decline is occurring due to a change in customers’ needs, repackaging the product for a new purpose or finding a new target market could be the potential solutions.

Some companies use sales analysis reports to create market price forecasts. For example, the market value of a specific product could be determined by its features and depending on how much money were customers willing to pay for it in the past.

This is especially the case in the real estate industry where specific characteristics of a house affect its overall value. These characteristics could be anything from the number of rooms, interior, location, swimming pool, square footage, and others.

In other cases, it could be the material of a product, its reputation, and its brand name.

Drawing new customers to your business is never easy, especially if you are a new company. The process consists of creating efficient marketing strategies and spending money on different sales consultations.

Sales analysis reports can make this process a bit easier. By analyzing the data in the report, you will have an easier time understanding your customers’ needs and coming up with targeted solutions.

In summary, a good sales analysis report will help you recognize your customers’ patterns and allow you to analyze their behavior.

Additionally, during this customer analysis, you will also gain an insight into which customers are generating the most revenue. You can use this information to create special discounts for them to keep them coming back for more.

Related : 7 Ways to Use Customer Data for More Efficient Marketing

Once we combine all of these previous benefits, we realize that sales analysis reports ultimately help you improve and optimize your future sales strategies.

If you properly analyze your product’s performance, customers, and the overall market, creating the perfect sales strategy will be a piece of cake.

Related : How to Boost Revenue with a Data-Driven Sales Enablement Strategy

Depending on which type of business you run, sales analysis reports tend to include different things.

This is because not every company focuses on the same areas of a sales process, some need insight into specific metrics more than others.

However, there are some universal things that all sales analysis reports should contain, such as.

• Significant sales KPIs and metrics (turnover, net margin, quantity sold, etc.)
• Total sales volume
• Net sales (different from sales volume since it is displayed through dollar figures)
• Gross sales
• KPI percentage comparisons between historic and current reports

While this list is rather short, it’s because sales analysis reports don’t have to include an abundance of data. In most cases, you will want to focus only on the most significant areas of your sales process in order to optimize it properly. Going through dozens of pages will only overwhelm you and your team.

But keep in mind, your goal isn’t only to display the numbers – you should also explain the story behind them.

PRO TIP: How to Set SMART Goals for Your Sales Team’s Performance

To decide which goals meet the SMART criteria, sales managers need to look at sales analytics for their teams and monitor sales KPIs, for example:

• Average Time to Close Deal
• New Deals Amount
• Number of Customers
• Average Revenue per New Customer

Based on these metrics, and in light of other revenue-based and activity-based goals, you can identify and set desired goals for future performance, but how to get this information?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our sales experts, who have put together a great Databox template showing an overview of your sales team’s performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in sales reports, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up this Sales Analytics Overview Dashboard , follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your HubSpot account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

For sales managers to acquire a clearer overview of the sales process, they incorporate different types of sales analysis reports.

This helps with data categorization and allows you to focus on specific areas of the sales process.

Here are some of the most common types of sales analysis reports that companies use nowadays.

Pipeline Report

Typical conversion rates report, average deal size report, average sales cycle length report, marketing collateral usage report, won and lost deals analysis report, churned customers report, sales call report, lead response time report, revenue report.

Pipeline reports are one of the best ways to create accurate estimates of your business’s health. By analyzing your sales pipeline , you will know which deals are the most successful, which are failing, and how each deal affects the overall pipeline individually.

But remember, coming up with accurate forecasts can only be done if your sales team does their due diligence. Make sure the representatives you pick for the job are well-qualified to create a realistic pipeline.

A conversion rate report showcases prospects to lead and lead to customer conversions. This report is mostly used for gaining insight into the efficiency of your sales strategies. It’s a great way to identify its strengths and weaknesses.

For example, if your strategy has proven successful in converting leads to opportunities, you should continue using it or even upgrade it. But, if opportunities for customer conversions aren’t working out, you will know which areas need to be optimized.

For forecasting revenue and tracking sales pipeline effectiveness, we use the average deal size report. For instance, if your quarterly revenue target is $100,000 and an average deal size is $10,000, you will naturally need ten deals to hit the target.

Of course, this is fairly obvious, but it’s useful to track these metrics through an individual report just to make sure you don’t get caught up in the numbers.

Additionally, this report can be a great way to set expectations and milestones for your sales team.

Related : 12 Tried and Tested Tips for Increasing your SaaS Average Deal Size

This report tracks the exact amount of time that it takes for a sales representative to close out a sale. We can use the average sales cycle length report to also analyze individual sales rep performances and how efficient the sales process is overall and what is the sales closing rate .

Before you start using this report, you should set an appropriate timeframe that can be considered as a benchmark. By using the benchmark, you will be able to estimate the amount of time an individual sales rep needs to close a sale.

In case they are struggling to meet the standards, you can help them realize which areas they need to work on. However, if your whole sales team is struggling, then you will have to re-evaluate your operations and approach.

PRO TIP: Are you struggling to track close rates by sales rep? Here are a few different ways on how to easily track and visualize close rates by sales reps from HubSpot CRM, no manual workarounds included – with Databox.

Marketing collateral is frequently used by sales reps to efficiently allocate prospects through the sales process. However, you should make sure that they are using the full advantage of marketing collateral and this report can help you with that.

You can use the marketing collateral usage report to check out which marketing campaigns have been the most successful and which failed to attract new prospects. Later, you can communicate your findings to the marketing team so they can have a better idea of what to improve.

While deals-in-progress are immensely important, you shouldn’t overlook won and lost deals statistics. The won and lost deals analysis report help you track these metrics.

Although winning deals is always one of the top priorities, it’s equally important to analyze lost deals and what caused them. Try to find patterns between the two so you can acquire meaningful insights into your product’s advantages and disadvantages.

Related : 19 Tried-and-True Lead Nurturing Tips for Closing More Deals

The churned customers report helps you figure out the exact reasons why users depart from your customer base.

This report can capture the problematic areas in your sales process, so you will have a better idea of what to improve.

Related : Save Your Business From Churn: 9 Churn Risk Factors to Identify

One more underestimated aspect of a sales process is sales calls. The sales call report allows you to monitor the number of calls that your sales representatives make to prospects. This metric directly impacts your team’s close rate as well.

Naturally, a successful sales rep will have a decent number of won deals compared to the number of prospects they contacted.

Additionally, once you know which sales reps are closing the most deals, you can ask them to share their tactics with the rest of the team and help out those that are struggling in this area.

Related : 11 Successful Plays for Running Great Sales Calls

The lead response time report, as the name suggests, tracks your sales reps’ response time for converting leads into opportunities.

Studies have established that if you contact your prospects in the first five minutes when they become a lead, you are much more likely to also convert them into an opportunity. Make sure your sales team knows this so they can act quickly when new leads appear.

PRO TIP: Struggling to reduce your average response time? Find out how Databox reduced median first response time , and which measures have been implemented to ensure this success is long-term and sustainable.

The revenue report provides you with insight into how the work of your sales representatives affects the overall sales process.

You can use it to monitor which representatives contributed to the business and renewals and how much. It’s recommended that you establish sales and revenue goals beforehand.

Related : How ProfitWell Grew Revenue Per Customer by 400 Percent in 12 Months

Once you have all of your important sales metrics and KPIs in one report, your next step is to start analyzing them.

This process may seem tedious at first, but with the right practices, you will be able to do it in no time. Here are three steps you can follow to efficiently analyze your sales results.

Identify the Data You Want to Track

Choose a sales analysis tool and analyze your data, share your results with relevant stakeholders.

We already mentioned that in sales analysis reports it’s best to separate the data that is significant to your business, to prevent getting caught up and overwhelmed with all the other metrics.

This way, you will only be analyzing the sales data that is the most important and you will have an easier time generating relevant insights.

If you aren’t sure how to separate the useful data, start by figuring out which products or departments in your business are top-performers and which need to be improved.

After you categorize your primary metrics, you should identify the different data sources, objective-related variables, and the performance metrics that you most commonly turn to.

Lastly, you should pick an appropriate time frame for data collection. This can be either on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.

To acquire sufficient results from your analysis, you will need a sales analytics tool at your disposal. Analyzing your data can be done manually, but it’s simply not worth it – you will end up losing both your time and nerves.

A lot of companies incorporate Microsoft Excel nowadays since it’s one of the most straightforward data analysis tools.

However, if you want a robust tool that offers more advanced features, you can try out Databox .

With Databox, you can connect all of your most important sales data into one comprehensive report, making the analysis process far easier. Additionally, you will also be able to visualize the sales metrics through the various visualization tools and transform them into meaningful charts and graphs.

After wrapping up the analysis, your last step is to present your findings to the highest-ranking members of the company.

Make sure to only include the key points of the analysis in your presentation, unless you are asked to do otherwise. Throwing in graphs and visuals can also go a long way in making the data more understandable to the stakeholders.

In summary, you should leave out the guess factor in your analysis and make everything as simple as possible – your stakeholders should be able to quickly comprehend the data and use it to create future strategies.

Related : How to Present Qualitative Data in a Business Report? A Step-By-Step Guide

If you don’t already have some experience writing sales analysis reports, the process may seem a bit too complex.

But don’t worry, we prepared a step-by-step guide that breaks down all the important parts of the process.

Follow these steps to create a great sales analysis report in no time.

Step 1: Make an Outline

Step 2: know your audience, step 3: create an overview of previous and current trends, step 4: compile the data, step 5: organize and present the information accordingly, step 6: proofread the report.

Create a plan on how your sales report should be organized. Remember, only throwing in a bunch of numbers won’t cut it, you will need to provide thorough explanations of those numbers.

Also, the report shouldn’t be an eyesore and the readers should be able to go through it with ease.  

In most cases, your report will vary in terms of included metrics, depending on your audience. For instance, if you are part of the sales team and you are preparing the report for your head of sales, you should focus on including as many significant KPIs as you can.

However, if you present the report to executives and stakeholders, they probably don’t want to be bothered by an abundance of details, so only include the key findings.

Related : Reporting Strategy for Multiple Audiences: 6 Tips for Getting Started

Depending on the size of your business and how much sales data you receive, you will have to determine an appropriate view for conveying information. This can be done either daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly.

Once enough time has gone by, you can compare the information between equivalent periods. This helps you stay on top of previous and current trends and allows you to determine the best tactics going forward.

After making an outline and setting an appropriate data collection period, it’s time to start assembling the sales data.

This usually includes pulling out data from the CRM software your company incorporates and then compiling it in one place.

As we said, sales analysis reports shouldn’t consist solely of numbers. Including graphs, charts, and even images can go a long way in making the data more comprehendible to the readers.

In some cases, you can even include recommendations for the next steps that should be taken in order to optimize the sales process.

Even if you have finished writing the report, it’s still not time to relax. It’s very important that you go over the report once or twice more and double-check everything that you included.

A good practice is to also ask your fellow colleagues or even a friend to go over the report as well. This provides you with an extra set of eyes.

Incorporating sales analysis reports is one of the best ways to stay on top of your sales data and optimize the overall process.

However, creating a great sales analysis report isn’t exactly the easiest task in the world. It requires gathering a massive amount of data, putting it together, analyzing it, and then presenting it to your internal stakeholders and executives.

This whole process can become a lot quicker and easier if you use an advanced reporting tool such as Databox.

Databox provides you with pre-built and customizable dashboards that you can use to gather all of the most important KPIs and sales-related metrics in one comprehensive place. You can connect data from any type of sales channel and then compile it into a meaningful report.

This will take a load off the analysis process as well. With all the numbers you need in one place, you won’t have to struggle with opening dozens of tabs during the analysis.

Additionally, with the help of our advanced visualization tools, you will be able to transform the numbers into insightful graphs and charts that will inevitably impress your shareholders during the presentation.

Do you want to optimize your sales analysis reporting process? Sign up for a free trial and experience the magic yourself.

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What is Sales Analysis?

Table of Contents

What is a Sale

A sale is an activity that generates profit or revenue for every business which consequently covers all the costs and expenses. Sale is very important for every organization. However, there are many ways to achieve the sale, easy and difficult both, they vary from business to business.

What is a Sales Analysis?

As the name implies sales analysis means analyzing the company’s sales over time. Different companies create sales analysis reports at different times; it might be on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis, quarterly basis or annual basis. The purpose of sale analysis is to check the company’s performance and how it can be improved.

Importance of Sales analysis

Opportunities to expand your reach.

By analyzing the sales data helps us to see the opportunities that we have missed or couldn’t claim it in the past and how we can achieve it in the future. It also helps us to make better decisions like which product to keep (continue) and which to discontinue. Or rearrange market activities, change in the manufacturing process, inventory management and which scheme or offer to be launched or not.

Customer Analysis

It would be absolutely right if we say that sales analysis equals to customer analysis because it tells us the buying and shopping of our targeted customer and how he reacts to our product or service.

Product Mix Analysis

Whenever a company plans to launch a new product; it is actually based on the sales analysis which tells us market trends and customer’s buying pattern. Sale analysis also tells the timing of the product to be launched, seasonally or off seasonal, holidays or festivals, because customer’s buying pattern changes depending upon the timing and situation.

Decision Making

All the top management decisions are based on the sales analysis, for instance, if a product isn’t selling then the company will decide to discontinue the product. Back in 2005-2006, Nokia button pad phones were at their peak but the management of Nokia ignored sales analysis reports and growth of upcoming touchpad phones at the time. What happened? 10 years later, Samsung captured the whole market of touchpad phones which were once belonged to Nokia’s button pad phones. Why? Nokia’s management refused to make a decision based on the sales analysis report.

Types of Sales Analysis

Different companies use different types of sales analysis depending upon their requirements. Here are some such as;

Descriptive Analysis

It describes the product, link or channel of distribution isn’t selling well and how it could be improved, or it should discontinue.

Predictive Analysis

As the name implies, it foretells the future sales based on the current and past sales analysis reports and timing.

Product Analysis

The sale of different products is different at different times of the year. For instance, winter’s clothes are only sold in the winter, but not in summer. Summer clothes are only sold in the summer, not in the winter.

Sales Analysis Examples and Templates

The purpose of sales analysis is to get the exact results of profit by sales. Now, the question is how to present your data into some understandable format, here’s a link to some templates;

Template.Net

Template.net is a good place where you can find sales analysis templates in different formats like Word, PDF, and excel. These sales templates can help you to collect and analyze sales data.

Sampletemplates.Net

This website is another good example of marketing and sales templates. It is not possible to set targets for the upcoming period without a detailed analysis. This is a place where you can find desired templates to analyze your sales reports, revenue, loss or any other expense incurred.

How to Create Your Sales Analysis Report

Sales analysis report can help you to discover very valuable information; it could be whether to change the product, price or even launch some new product or service.

The difference between the financial statement and sales analysis report is that the financial statement only provides you sales records and numbers. Sales analysis report, on the other hand, also provides you the new opportunities to grow your business and how it can be improved along with the financial statement.

What You Want to Track

Sales analysis report provides you an opportunity to dig deeper through the surface of certain product, service or department. If you’re planning to create a sales analysis report, then your objectives must be outlined, such as;

• Repetitive sales to your targeted customers at one location
• Newly acquired customer in a given time period
• Frequently mentioning the purchases during the campaign.

How Frequently You Need Sales Analysis

Your company must decide how often they want to track their sales whether it is daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and so on because it gives you an overview of your previous sale. There must be more than one sales analysis reports with multiple variables.

How frequently your sales analysis reports should be; it depends on the nature and category of sale. As Gandy explains it that you want more frequent reports during the period of marketing promotions and in the season rather than in an ordinary typical month.

Set the Important Variable

You must know your key variables and how they are going to provide you the necessary data to achieve your objectives. Gandy suggests that one should drill down from top to bottom for more detailed variables like;

• Amount of sale

If you want to be more precise about your product line, service, and customer trends; then add some more detailed variables such as;

• Product number
• Gross margins of the product
• Category of the product
• Customer data like phone number, email address, and name
• Metrics for your sale campaign

Collect all the data (sales) from the sales point to customer management and put it into a spreadsheet.

Tabular and Graphically Representation

Once you have your required sales data in an excel spreadsheet. Now convert it into line graph or bar chart, it’s all automatic, just select the option and excel will the rest. This graphical representation will tell you that which of your sales variables are decreasing, growing, and maintaining a steady level. You can also compare your sales performance in a certain time period like a holiday, off-seasons, festivals, and etc. To check your sale performance from the historical perspective, you can track certain incrementing variables over the life of your product, service or business.

Analyze Your Results

Once your data is present in charts and graphs; then the final step is to analyze your sales report and look for market emerging patterns and trends and asks questions like;

• What mix (product & service) is bought by the customers collectively?
• When certain items of a mix (product or service) are being sold mostly?
• Does the buyer follow any seasonal trends? Or any pattern emerges?
• Repetitive customers and first-time customers are buying the same items of certain or different products?

Most importantly, notice the changes in your sales over a period of time. If some product or service isn’t performing, find out why and how it could be improved.

About The Author

Ahsan Ali Shaw

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Analytics for Marketers

• Fabrizio Fantini
• Das Narayandas

Advanced analytics can help companies solve a host of management problems, including those related to marketing, sales, and supply-chain operations, which can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage. But as more data becomes available and advanced analytics are further refined, managers may struggle with when, where, and how much to incorporate machines into their business analytics, and to what extent they should bring their own judgment to bear when making data-driven decisions.

In general, humans are better at decisions involving intuition and ambiguity resolution. Machines are far superior at decisions requiring deduction, granularity, and scalability. How can you find the right balance?

There are three common approaches to analytics: descriptive, where decisions are made mainly by humans; predictive, which combines aspects of the other two; and prescriptive, which usually means autonomous management by machines. This article describes when and how to use each approach and examines the trade-offs and limitations. Although the focus is on marketing and sales, the principles may be applied more broadly.

When to rely on algorithms and when to trust your gut

Idea in Brief

The challenge.

As more data becomes available and advanced analytics are further refined, managers may struggle with when to trust machines and when to trust their gut.

The Difference

Humans are better at decisions involving intuition and ambiguity resolution; machines are far superior at decisions requiring deduction, granularity, and scalability.

The Guidance

The authors’ framework suggests the best approach—and balance between human and machine—given the type of decision to be made and the data available.

Advanced analytics can help companies solve a host of management problems, including those related to marketing, sales, and supply-chain operations, which can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage. For example, firms can integrate decisions and optimize the entire value chain by modeling individual customers’ behaviors and preferences and offering tailored products priced as close as possible to shoppers’ willingness-to-pay price points—all while reducing the cost of servicing individual transactions.

• FF Fabrizio Fantini is the founder and CEO of Evo Pricing, a firm offering AI solutions to automate and optimize pricing and supply-chain decisions.
• DN Das Narayandas is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

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Sales Data: How to Perform a Sales Data Analysis

Discover how to perform a sales data analysis to boost your business. Learn to collect, analyse, and apply insights to drive sales and improve strategies.

Salesforce Staff

Share article.

Sales data is a powerful tool that can help you understand your business, make informed decisions, and improve your sales performance. Regularly analysing sales data is crucial for gaining real-time insights into the sales cycle, driving improvement, and setting the team up for success. By doing so, you can track your progress, identify trends, and forecast future sales growth. You can also segment your customers, evaluate your marketing campaigns, and make data-driven decisions about your business. In this blog post, we will show you how to collect, analyse, and use sales data to improve your business. We will also discuss some of the key sales data metrics that you should track, and how to present your sales data in a way that is easy to understand.

What is sales data?

Sales data is a valuable asset for businesses of all sizes. It provides insights into customer behaviour, sales performance, and market trends. By analysing sales data, businesses can make informed decisions about product development, marketing, and sales strategies.

Sales data can be collected from various sources, including point-of-sale systems, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and e-commerce platforms. Once collected, the data can be analysed using various tools and techniques, such as business intelligence (BI) software and data visualisation tools.

Sales data can be used to track key performance indicators (KPIs), such as revenue, profit, customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value. By tracking these metrics, businesses can measure their progress and identify areas for improvement. Additionally, sales data can be used to identify trends and patterns, such as seasonal fluctuations in demand or changes in customer preferences. This information can be used to make informed decisions about product development, marketing, and sales strategies.

For example, a business might use sales data to identify which products are most popular with customers, or which marketing campaigns are most effective. This information can then be used to make decisions about which products to invest in, or which marketing campaigns to continue.

In summary, sales data is a valuable tool that can help businesses improve their performance. By collecting and analysing sales data, businesses can gain insights into customer behaviour, sales performance metrics, and market trends. This information can be used to make informed decisions about product development, marketing, and sales strategies.

Key sales data metrics

Businesses need to track a variety of sales metrics to measure their performance and make informed decisions. Some of the most important sales data metrics include:

Total Revenue:  This is the total amount of money that a business brings in from sales over a given period of time. It is calculated by multiplying the number of units sold by the price per unit. Total revenue is a key metric for measuring the overall success of a business and can be used to track growth over time.

Profit Margin: This is the percentage of revenue that a business keeps after subtracting all costs associated with producing and selling its products or services. It is calculated by dividing the gross profit (total revenue minus the cost of goods sold) by the total revenue. Profit margin is a key metric for measuring the profitability of a business and can be used to identify areas where costs can be reduced.

Customer Acquisition Cost: This is the average amount of money that a business spends to acquire a new customer. It is calculated by dividing the total marketing and sales expenses by the number of new customers acquired over a given period of time. Customer acquisition cost is a key metric for measuring the efficiency of a business’s marketing and sales efforts and can be used to identify ways to reduce costs.

Customer Lifetime Value:  This is the total amount of money that a business can expect to earn from a customer over their lifetime. It is calculated by multiplying the average customer lifespan by the average revenue per customer. Customer lifetime value is a key metric for measuring the profitability of a business’s customer relationships and can be used to identify ways to increase customer retention and loyalty.

Average Deal Size:  This metric is crucial for calculating Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and monitoring upsell performance. It reflects the average revenue generated from each deal, helping businesses to determine pipeline velocity and provide targeted training to sales reps to maximise deal values.

Average Order Value: This is the average amount of money that a customer spends on a single purchase. It is calculated by dividing the total revenue by the number of orders over a given period of time. Average order value is a key metric for measuring the effectiveness of a business’s pricing strategy and can be used to identify ways to increase sales.

These are just a few of the key sales data metrics that businesses should track. By understanding these metrics, businesses can make informed decisions about their product development, marketing, and sales strategies to improve their sales teams overall performance.

How to collect sales data  

There are several methods for collecting sales data, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Some common methods include:

Tracking website analytics:  Website analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, can provide valuable insights into how customers interact with your website. This data can include information such as the number of visitors to your site, the pages they visit, and the amount of time they spend on each page. By analysing this data, you can gain insights into customer behaviour and identify areas where you can improve your website to increase sales.

Sending surveys to customers:  Customer surveys can provide valuable feedback about your products, services, and customer experience. By sending surveys to your customers, you can gather information about their satisfaction levels, identify areas for improvement, and collect suggestions for new products or services. Surveys can be conducted online, via email, or over the phone.

Using a CRM system: A customer relationship management (CRM) system can help you track customer interactions and manage your sales pipeline. CRM systems can store customer contact information, track sales activities, and provide insights into customer behaviour. By using a CRM system, you can improve your sales efficiency and effectiveness.

Monitoring social media mentions and online reviews: Social media and online reviews can provide valuable insights into customer sentiment and brand reputation. By monitoring social media mentions and online reviews, you can identify areas where you can improve your products or services and address customer concerns. You can also use social media and online reviews to generate leads and build relationships with potential customers.

By collecting and analysing sales data, you can gain valuable insights into your business and make informed decisions to improve your sales performance.

The importance of sales data analysis

Sales data analysis is important because it can help businesses make more informed decisions, understand customer behaviour, identify their most profitable products and services, track their progress, and stay ahead of the competition.

Informed Decisions

With accurate and timely sales data, businesses can make more informed decisions about their product development, marketing, and sales strategies. For instance, by analysing historical sales data, businesses can identify seasonal trends, customer preferences, and market demands. This information can then be used to develop new products or services, target specific customer segments, and optimise marketing campaigns. Additionally, analysing sales per region helps in determining where products or services are selling the best, enhancing sales and marketing efforts through intelligent performance insights and actionable suggestions for improving these efforts.

Understanding Customer Behaviour

Sales data analysis provides valuable insights into customer behaviour, including their buying patterns, preferences, and pain points. By using sales analytics and understanding customer behaviour, businesses can develop targeted marketing campaigns, improve customer service, and create products and services that better meet customer needs.

Identifying Profitable Products and Services

Sales data analysis helps businesses identify their most profitable products and services. This information can then be used to allocate resources more effectively, focus on high-potential opportunities, and discontinue underperforming products or services.

Tracking Progress

Sales data analysis allows businesses to track their progress over time and measure the effectiveness of their sales and marketing strategies. By using predictive sales analysis and comparing current sales data to historical data, businesses can identify areas of improvement and make necessary adjustments to their strategies.

Staying Ahead of the Competition

In today’s competitive business environment, it is crucial for businesses to stay ahead of the competition. Sales data analysis provides businesses with the insights they need to make informed decisions, identify new opportunities, and develop strategies that give them a competitive edge.

You’ve recorded your sales data — now what? Understanding the sales funnel

After collecting your sales data, the next step is to analyse it to gain valuable insights into your business. By identifying trends and patterns through sales analysis, you can make informed decisions about your sales strategy and improve your overall performance.

One way to analyse your sales data is to look for trends over time. This can help you identify seasonal fluctuations, changes in customer behaviour, and the impact of marketing campaigns. For example, you might see a spike in sales during the holiday season or a decrease in sales during the summer months. By understanding these trends, you can adjust your sales strategy accordingly.

Another way to analyse your sales data is to segment your customers. This involves dividing your customers into different groups based on shared characteristics, such as demographics, purchase history, or location. By segmenting your customers, you can target your marketing and sales efforts more effectively and increase your chances of success.

For a sales cycle for instance, if you have a group of customers who frequently purchase high-priced items, you could create a targeted marketing campaign specifically for them. Or, if you have a group of customers who live in a particular region, you could hold a local sales event.

Finally, you can use your sales data to evaluate your marketing campaigns. By using sales targets and tracking the results of your marketing campaigns, you can see what is working and what is not. This information can help you fine-tune your marketing efforts and get the most out of your marketing budget.

For example, if you run a paid advertising campaign, you can track the number of leads generated by the campaign and the conversion rate of those leads. This information can help you determine the effectiveness of your campaign and make adjustments as needed.

By analysing your sales data, you can gain valuable insights into your business and make informed decisions to improve your sales performance. So, what are you waiting for? Start analysing your sales data today!

Perfecting your sales team performance and sales process

Sales data can also be used to perfect your sales process. By analysing your sales data, you can identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in your sales process and take steps to streamline it. For example, you may find that your sales team is spending too much time on administrative tasks or that they are not following up with leads quickly enough. By identifying these inefficiencies, you can take steps to improve your sales process and increase your sales. Understanding the sales funnel is crucial for evaluating the health of your sales process and the team’s ability to move prospects through the funnel to turn them into customers.

In addition to identifying bottlenecks, you can also use sales data to automate your sales process. By automating tasks such as lead generation, qualification, sales pipeline analysis and nurturing, you can free up your sales team to focus on more important tasks. This can lead to increased sales and improved customer service.

Finally, you can use sales data to train your sales team and develop targeted marketing campaigns. By understanding your sales data, you can identify the needs of your customers and develop marketing campaigns that reach your ideal customers. You can also use sales data to track the performance of your sales team and provide them with feedback to help them improve their sales team performance further.

By following these tips, you can use sales data to improve your sales process and increase your sales. Sales data is a valuable tool that can help you make informed decisions about your business and achieve your sales goals.

How to present your sales data with dashboards

You’ve collected and analysed your sales data, and now it’s time to present your findings in a way that’s easy to understand and actionable. Dashboards are a great way to do this, as they allow you to visualise your data and track your progress over time.

When creating a sales data dashboard, it’s important to focus on creating a data-driven narrative. This means telling a story with your data, and highlighting the key insights that you want your audience to take away. For example, you might want to show how your sales have increased over time, or how your conversion rate has improved.

To do this, you’ll need to use the right charts and visualisations. Bar charts and line graphs are a good way to show trends over time, while pie charts and scatter plots can be used to show relationships between different variables. It’s also important to consider your audience when choosing your charts and visualisations. If your audience is not familiar with data analysis, you’ll need to use simple charts and visualisations that are easy to understand.

Finally, keep your dashboard simple. Don’t try to cram too much information onto one dashboard, as this will only make it difficult to read and understand. Instead, focus on presenting the most important information in a clear and concise way.

By following these tips, you can create sales reports and data dashboards that are informative, actionable, and easy to understand. This will help you make better decisions about your business and improve your sales performance.

Sales data analysis with Salesforce

Salesforce is a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) platform that can be used to analyse your sales data and gain valuable insights into your business. With Salesforce, you can combine data from various sources, such as your CRM, marketing automation platform, and website analytics, to get a complete view of your sales performance. You can then use Salesforce’s analytics cloud to create reports and dashboards that visualise your data and make it easy to understand.

One of the most powerful features of Salesforce for sales data analysis is Einstein Analytics. Einstein Analytics is a predictive analytics tool that uses artificial intelligence to identify trends and patterns in your data. This information can be used to forecast future sales, identify at-risk customers, and develop targeted marketing campaigns.

In addition to its analytics capabilities, Salesforce can also be used to automate repetitive sales tasks, such as your sales reps sending follow-up emails and creating sales orders. This can free up your sales team to focus on more strategic tasks, such as building relationships with customers and closing deals.

Finally, Salesforce can be used to centralise all of your sales data in one place, making it easier to access and to analyse sales further. This can be especially helpful for businesses that have multiple sales channels or locations.

By using Salesforce for sales data analysis, you can gain valuable insights into your business and improve your overall sales performance.

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How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

Learn how to do market research with this step-by-step guide, complete with templates, tools and real-world examples.

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What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry. The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

Why is market research important? 

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

• Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
• Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
• Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
• Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
• Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
• Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete. 

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Exploratory research
• Descriptive research
• Causal research
• Cross-sectional research
• Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research 

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

• Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
• Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
• Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research 

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

• Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant. 
• Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
• Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment. 

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment. 

Market research methods

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Observational research
• Online research tools
• Experiments
• Content analysis
• Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data: 

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback. 

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

• Set clear objectives
• Identify your target audience
• Choose your research methods
• Use the right market research tools
• Collect data
• Analyze data 
• Interpret your findings
• Identify opportunities and challenges
• Make informed business decisions
• Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign? 

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process. 

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective. 

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study. 

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

• Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

• Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
• Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
• Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
• Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors. 

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research. 

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

• Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

• Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
• Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
• Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
• Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends. 

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values. 

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

• Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
• SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
• HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
• SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
• SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups. 

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started. 

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

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25 Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

Published: April 30, 2024

Conducting market research pulls details together to help you choose new products or services to launch. They also help identify your audiences and best marketing strategies so you are ready to act without the guesswork.

Businesses use market research software to minimize risk and make more data-driven choices.

I own a small business, and by gathering facts and opinions, I can better predict whether new products or features — and for more prominent companies, even locations — will succeed before investing.

Here are 25 of the best tools for conducting market research, including a few recommendations directly from HubSpot market researchers and bloggers who use them.

Helpful Market Research Tools & Resources

1. similarweb.

Image Source

Similarweb is probably the highest quality, most well-known, and most convenient way to get and compare traffic information about any website you land on — short of having an expert analyst whispering in your ear, which could get awkward. Their free suite of products — including the Chrome extension — is worth exploring and gives you useful, high-level information. The deep insights come from taking advantage of their database of real-world information on global website performance gathered over time, which they’ve already been building for over 10 years. They have their finger on the pulse of online business worldwide, from sales to sites to stocks.

Microsoft, Amazon, and even Google use Similarweb and the insights they provide on other enterprise-level operations down to small businesses. If you want to know how your company stacks up and then initiate a robust research and marketing campaign, these are serious tools that can help you grow.

What I like: One of their add-ons is called App Intelligence, and it can benchmark your growth and track your progress against millions of apps — for both iOS and Android — and provide daily insights on app rankings, engagement, retention, and more.

Pricing : Starter plans cost $125 per month paid annually; professional plans cost $333 per month billed annually; team and enterprise plans have custom pricing.

For Max Iskiev , market research analyst at HubSpot, one research tool stands out from the rest: Glimpse.

He told me, “Glimpse is my favorite research tool. It’s quick and easy to use, allowing me to design and launch short surveys for real-time insights on trending topics.”

Writers for the HubSpot Marketing Blog have also used Glimpse to run short, 100-person surveys for articles (case in point: Are Sales Reps Rushing Back to the Office? ).

Not only is Glimpse valuable for doing quick pulse-checks on the latest trends, but it also leverages the power of AI for even deeper insights.

“Glimpse really shines when it comes to open-ended questions, using natural language processing and AI to analyze emotion and sentiment, saving time, and offering invaluable insights,” Iskiev shared.

Best for: Those who can invest in AI tools for their businesses but don’t need a decade’s deep dive like users of Similarweb might.

Pricing : Starter Plan - Free; Professional - $500/month; Advanced - $1,000/month; Enterprise - custom pricing.

3. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo offers several highly useful tools that work best as a content research tool for mid-size businesses and up. If you need many ideas for a whole lot of content, BuzzSumo is likely a good fit for your company.

Their monitoring tools can alert you to new content that relates to your keywords of choice.

This is smart for writers, content strategists, and those who manage writers and content strategists to stay on top of trends in what consumers want to know more about within your industry — so you’re right there to provide it.

BuzzSumo also gives you access to reporting tools that stream various sources of information to your dashboard, making it easy to keep up with developments and build visual assets to communicate about them.

You can find major influencers — worldwide — through BuzzSumo that fit your brand to sponsor and collaborate with.

Unfortunately, BuzzSumo doesn’t integrate well with Instagram, so you’ll want to focus on influencers that use other social channels unless you’re willing to do IG work on the side.

What I like: Their Chrome extension is a nice addition to their offerings for companies that work with freelancers and remote workers to take the work on the move.

Pricing: Free 30-day trials are available. Content creation plans cost $199 per month; PR and comms plans cost $299 per month; suite plans cost $499 per month; and Enterprise plans cost $999 per month.

4. Answer the Public

Answer the Public is a sister product to UberSuggest, both being brainchildren of Neil Patel.

Answer: the Public watches what people are searching for and lets you keep track of how things change over time. By studying the changes, you can be at the front of trends — positive or negative — so you can respond to the changes quickly.

It’s billed as an excellent tool for public relations professionals to give them a heads-up on how their company is faring in the public eye.

If you fall on the wrong side of public sentiment, you can be right on top of salvaging the situation and making improvements to regain trust.

If you’re doing something right and see gains in positive engagement, you know to keep up what you’re doing and may even want to expand upon it.

Great examples of what organizations have done with information like this include Wendy’s ongoing roasts and savage clapbacks on social media.

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation’s hilarious insistence on not bringing mountain lions in the house also nabbed engagement by the truckloads (of corgis).

What I like: I like that Masterclass videos are available. They make sure to include lots of opportunities to learn how to best use their products and get maximum value from the suite.

Pricing : Individual plans cost $9 per month; pro plans cost $99 per month; expert plans cost $199 per month. Lifetime Pricing is available. Individual lifetime plans cost $99, pro lifetime plans cost $199; and expert lifetime plans cost $1,990.

5. GrowthBar SEO

GrowthBar SEO is all-in for AI. If your leadership wants a slice of the AI action at work in the company’s market research, this might be the tool to reach for.

It uses ChatGPT-4, and the peer-to-peer review site G2 ranked it the #1 AI writing tool for SEO in 2022 and 2023.

What sets it apart is that the AI writing assistant doesn’t just compile and give word to information it finds online.

It offers selections of relevant keywords, titles, headings, industry standard word counts, and link suggestions that you can choose from as you move through the outline.

They also include tools for keyword research, keyword ranking, and information about your keyword competitors. And because Google search is incorporated into the suite, you can do most, if not all, of your writing work on one screen.

Pro tip: As with all AI content, you’ll need a writer to bring the content to life by fact-checking information, adding unique or inside perspectives, meaningful quotes, and many other values that make the content rich to read.

GrowthBar SEO knows this, and you can source freelance writers there as well!

Pricing : A seven-day free trial is available. Standard plans cost $36 per month; pro plans cost $74.25 per month; and agency plans cost $149.25 per month.

6. Statista

Statista is a data visualization website that takes data from reputable reports across the web and makes them easy and digestible for researchers, marketers, and product creators just like you.

“Statista is like my market research sidekick, giving me all the data I need without the endless search. No more digging through the haystack. With Statista, I can spot trends and make informed decisions with ease," Icee Griffin , market researcher at HubSpot, told me.

One neat aspect of using Statista is that the same chart is updated as the years pass. Say that you want to allude to the value of the beauty market in your proposal.

If your investor accesses that same graph a year from now, it will reflect updated numbers. Statista finds the most recent research to update their visualizations.

Pro tip: Statista doesn’t carry out original research, but does have around 100 analysts who seek out gaps in their resources to provide ever more useful, trending data.

Pricing : Basic plans are free. Starter plans cost $199 per month, billed annually. Professional plans cost $959 per month, billed annually.

7. Think With Google Research Tools

Wish you had information on your product’s likelihood of success?

Think With Google’s marketing research tools offer interesting insights on whether anyone is looking for your product ( Google Trends ), which markets to launch to ( Market Finder ), and what retail categories rise as the months and seasons pass ( Rising Retail Categories ).

If you’d like to market your product through YouTube, the Find My Audience tool allows you to investigate what your potential viewers are interested in and what you should discuss on your brand’s YouTube channel.

What I like: Free and incredibly useful in my experience, small and newer businesses really benefit from having tools like this to conduct market research and get their growth rolling.

Pricing : Free

8. Census Bureau

The Census Bureau offers a free resource for searching U.S. census data.

You can filter by age, income, year, and location. You can also use some of its shortcuts to access visualizations of the data, allowing you to see potential target markets across the country.

If you’re considering a highly competitive product or service, you can easily find out where your target industry is most popular — or where the market has been oversaturated.

Another helpful tool is the Census Bureau Business and Economy data , where you can also target premade tables depending on your industry.

Pro tip: The text information on each screen can be overwhelming, so here’s a shortcut for you. One of the best ways to use this tool is by finding the NAICS code for your business.

Then, access the " Tables “ tool, click ”Filter" on the sidebar, and search for your industry.

9. Make My Persona

HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool allows you to create a buyer persona for your potential new product. In this tool, you pick a name for the persona, choose their age, identify their career characteristics, and identify their challenges.

This allows you to pinpoint both demographic and psychographic information.

Creating a buyer persona is an early step in the marketing process but an important one to avoid scope creep.

If you’re unsure about details like these and how to use market research tools for your business, let me recommend Hubspot’s Market Research Kit .

It’s completely free and helps you build a strong foundation for data-driven decision-making in your future marketing strategies.

Best for: Make My Persona is best suited to B2B product launches because you’ll be prompted to document your buyer persona’s career objectives and role-specific challenges.

Ideally, your product would solve a problem for them in the workplace or help their company achieve revenue goals.

10. Tableau

Tableau is a business intelligence suite of products that allows you to “connect to virtually any data source.” But the data isn’t presented in unreadable tables.

Rather, Tableau helps you visualize this data in a way that helps you glean insights, appeal to external stakeholders, and communicate the feasibility of your product to potential investors.

You can visualize data on anything from corn production in tropical climate zones to office product sales in North America. With Tableau’s tools, you can take as granular or as general a look you’d like into potential marketplaces and supplier regions.

What I like: Visual information for humans and pure data for the machines all in one. Tableau integrates well with spreadsheets and databases so that you can export Tableau data to Excel , back up records in Amazon Redshift, and more.

Pricing : Tableau Viewer plans cost $14 per user each month when billed annually. Tableau Explorer plans cost $42 per user each month when billed annually. Tableau Creator plans cost $75 per user each month when billed annually.

11. Paperform

A market research survey is an effective way to better understand your target audience and their needs by asking them directly.

This step is integral to understanding your dream customers’ problems, so you want to ensure the process is as interactive as possible and gathers objective, accurate responses.

With its free-text interface, Paperform is as simple as writing a Word document. You can make your survey stand out by customizing colors, fonts, layouts, and themes to create your unique look and feel.

There are 27+ question field types, such as ranking, matrix, or scale fields. Use several to create visually engaging surveys that collect more information and see higher completion stats.

If you’re unsure where to start, you can use one of their expertly-made questionnaires or market research survey templates to get you started.

Best for: In my experience, Paperform is able to efficiently incorporate multiple customer personas. It uses conditional logic to show or hide questions or whole sections of content to create fully personalized paths.

These interactive forms lower drop-off rates and boost customer interaction.

Pricing: Essentials plans cost $29 per month. Pro plans cost $59 per month. Business plans cost $199 per month. For enterprise pricing, contact Paperform’s sales team.

GWI is an on-demand consumer research platform that makes audience research a breeze. Powered by the world’s largest study on the online consumer base, GWI provides insights into the lives of over 2.8 billion consumers across 50+ markets.

With 250k+ profiling points, you can find your unique customers and learn everything you need to know about who they are, what’s on their minds, and what they’re up to.

One user-friendly platform makes it quick and easy to become an expert on your audience and capture the answers you need to succeed.

Pro tip: GWI even has features to compare markets and create customized and shareable charts in seconds, helping you distribute critical information as quickly as you find it.

Pricing : Explore Interactive Demo for free; Flexible and custom pricing with discounts available.

13. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a powerful tool for creating in-depth market research surveys that will help you understand your market and consumer preferences.

With this tool, you can create targeted, uber-specific surveys that help you collect answers that pertain specifically to your product.

While using a data source can give you a general overview of your target audience and market, SurveyMonkey can help you get more granular insights from real consumers.

SurveyMonkey offers dedicated market research solutions and services and a reporting dashboard option that allows you to easily parse through the results.

What I like: I like that SurveyMonkey is a good fit for exploring markets beyond your shores. It includes a global survey panel and survey translation service for international research.

• Individual plans: Advantage annual plans cost $39 per month. Premier annual plans cost $119 a month. Monthly plans cost $99 per month.
• Team plans: Team advantage plans cost $29 per person each month. Team premier plans cost $75 per person each month.
• Enterprise pricing is available upon request.

14. Typeform

Like SurveyMonkey, Typeform allows you to run research surveys to get direct answers from your target consumers. It’s an easy-to-use, mobile-optimized form-builder that’s great for market research.

Typeform’s distinguishing factor is that it shows viewers one form field at a time. In its templates, Typeform encourages a more conversational, casual approach (like in its market research survey template ).

You can create a wide range of question types, and other features include the ability to recall answers from previous questions and create logic jumps.

In a survey, you’d want to collect both demographic and psychographic information on your customers to understand their purchasing behaviors and the problems they encounter.

The goal is to find out if your product is the solution to one of those problems — and whether, before launching, you should add more features or rethink your product positioning strategy .

Best for: I think Typeform is best for product launches that target a younger demographic.

If you’re targeting C-suite executives at established firms, consider a more formal option, such as SurveyMonkey, or keeping your tone more formal in your questions.

Pricing : Free plans are available. Basic plans cost $29 per month. Plus plans cost $59 per month. Business plans cost $99 per month. Enterprise plans are available upon request.

15. PureSpectrum Insights (Previously Upwave Instant Insights )

PureSpectrum acquired Upwave Instant Insights in 2021 and rebranded as PureSpectrum Insights.

As before, this platform is primarily a consumer research tool. While it isn’t advertised as a survey creation tool, it allows you to launch market research surveys specifically to get consumer insights.

PureSpectrum allows you to perform customer and market segmentation and also to visualize your data for easy scanning by key stakeholders and investors. They’ve grown to include A/B testing, brand tracking, and customer sentiment.

Pro tip: PureSpectrum distributes your survey to real people. Take a look at their marketplace profile to get a sense of where and from whom you can collect valuable data.

Pricing : Schedule a demo for more information.

16. Claritas MyBestSegment

Claritas MyBestSegment provides product researchers with tools to understand a specific area’s demographic information as well as the lifestyle habits of those who live there.

Their audience segments give you information gleaned from tens of thousands of data points, giving you insight into much more than just household income, employment, and education levels.

By finding out what a segment of the population does — without having to go out and survey them — you can find out which areas would be most receptive to a campaign or launch.

You can also discover which competitors are located nearby and which lifestyle trends have shifted or are on the rise.

What I like: I like that they are able to do some of the leg work for you. Syndicated Audiences is a tool available from Claritas for finding an organized audience of consumers who are more likely to be interested in your products or services.

Pricing : Pricing is available upon request.

Loop11 is a user experience testing platform that allows you to test the usability of your website, study user intent, test the information architecture of your site, and examine how the user experience changes based on the device they’re using.

Loop11 tests your site on any device by making users perform tasks. They then complete a short question about how easy or difficult the task was to complete.

Your product may be phenomenal, but unless consumers can actually buy it through your site, your launch won’t be successful.

You can use Loop11’s participants for niche demographics or bring in your own to learn more about your current customers.

Best for: Market research for your site development. You can find out whether your target consumers find your site easy to navigate and also identify snags that prevent conversions.

Pricing : Rapid Insights plans cost $199 monthly or $179 per month, billed annually. Pro plans cost $399 per month or $358 per month, billed annually. Enterprise plans cost $599 per month or $533 per month, billed annually.

18. Userlytics

Like Loop11, Userlytics allows you to test the usability of your website, mobile app, and site prototype. You can target different devices, define a buyer persona, and disqualify participants based on screening questions.

Testing is based on tasks that your test-takers carry out. They then answer a simple question about the difficulty of the task. You can structure the question in various ways:

You can leave it open-ended, provide multiple choices, or ask for a rating. Other formats you can use include System Usability Scale (SUS) questions, Net Promoter Score (NPS) questions, and Single Ease Questions (SEQ).

What I like: Userlytics performs both a webcam and a screen recording. You can compare the user’s answers with their reactions on video to understand how they feel when they’re interacting with your assets.

Pricing : Schedule a free demo for more information.

Sometimes, you need a no-frills test to take the pulse of consumers. Temper allows you to create a question and pop it onto your website, into your emails, etc.

The smiley face, “meh” face, and frowny face make it easy for viewers to share their feelings — and for you to read their minds.

You can also add it to a product page or a landing page, tailoring the questions to fit your offerings.

As for what you see, there are three options for receiving the feedback: in a tab on each page you are monitoring, embedded in the web page itself to narrow in on aspects within the page, or at the bottom of emails so you can get real-time information as the interaction unfolds.

Pro tip: One great way I’ve seen this used is by adding it to a blog post announcing the launch of a new product. You can find out general sentiment toward the product before it even launches!

Pricing : Hobby plans cost $12 per month. Pro plans cost $49 per month. Business plans cost $89 per month. White label plans cost $199 per month.

20. NielsenIQ (NIQ)

NielsenIQ (NIQ) is a retail and consumer intelligence consultant that works with you to collect consumer insights, identify the best distribution channels for your product, and create a range of products to address the needs of your target buyers.

This service helps you look at your product launch from all angles, delivering forecasting data that predicts how your sales will perform upon launch. NielsenIQ can also run consumer insights surveys on their list of panelists and partners.

NIQ now offers a service called Byzzer to help small businesses with fewer resources. It opens a door for market research reporting, in-person events, and consulting at a lower cost than the full NIQ suite.

Best for: I think Byzzer can be a helpful and affordable option for smaller businesses, but because NielsenIQ operates like a consultant and not as a self-service software, it is a better option for established firms with a bigger product launch budget.

Pricing : Pricing is available on request.

21. Ubersuggest

Don’t be intimidated by the visually text-heavy Ubersuggest. It really is an easy tool for doing keyword and content research. You just input a phrase, and it’ll create a list of keyword suggestions.

You can also see top-performing articles and pages to better understand the types of content that rank for those keywords.

This tool is useful for market research because you can see who your top competitors are, how often your product is searched for, and whether there’s enough space in the market for the type of product you’re launching.

You can also find out the questions your target audience asks in relation to the product. Each of these questions can be turned into an informative blog post that can guide your audience, increase your brand authority, and drive conversions.

Pro tip: If you want a quick look at the results you can get, head to their website and do a search — just know that you only get one glimpse before they make you register. Alternatives to Ubersuggest include Moz , Ahrefs , and SEMRush .

Pricing : Free seven-day trials are available for all three tiers. Individual plans cost $29 per month. Business plans cost $49 per month. Enterprise and agency plans cost $99 per month. Add-ons are available at $5 each. Lifetime memberships are also available.

22. Pew Research Center

From economic conditions to political attitudes, social media usage to food science, the Pew Research Center website has loads of free research that you can use to better understand your target markets.

Be careful with your curiosity, though. It’s a gorgeous trap of interesting information that can drain your day away — but so happily.

I that Pew Research Center integrates visual data directly into the text — and we’re not talking about a chart or image spliced in.

The site has hundreds of interactive articles that allow you to filter and sift through the data for more granular, targeted insights while also making dense information easier to understand.

Their research topic selection is delightfully vast. Click the top left tab for “ Research Topics.” Then, there is a link to their “ Full Topic List .” Once there, each topic cluster has a “ More ” option.

What I like: As a writer in digital marketing, I am always on the hunt for targeted and nutritious quotes and insights. I love that you have access to what research participants actually had to say below the Pew Research articles.

It’s a stellar feature for building compelling presentations. The quotes are tagged, too, so you can sort quotes more specifically on various concepts or groups related to the research.

Here’s an example article — scroll to the In Their Own Words section at the bottom to check it out.

23. SocialMention (Part of BrandMentions)

SocialMention is a part of BrandMentions focused on social media monitoring. The platform helps you understand what your prospective customers are buzzing about online.

Search for a keyword, and SocialMentions will show you recent social posts that contain that keyword, along with the context of its usage.

After subscribing to the platform, you’ll also get other metrics such as Reach (how many people view the keyword per day), Performance (how many people engage with the keyword per day), and Mentions by Weekday (when people mention the keyword).

One way to use this tool for market research is by finding out what time of day or night people are looking for your product on social media sites.

Let’s say you’ve developed a sleeping aid app and learn through SocialMention that most people look for sleeping aid apps at 2:00 AM. When you start announcing your product, you will need to schedule your post around 2:00 AM.

Pro tip: Another useful tool you’ll have access to is sentiment analysis on your keywords. It allows you to find out how people are generally feeling about the type of product you’re launching.

That way, you can refine the tone of your campaigns.

Pricing : Growing business plans cost $79 per month. Company plans cost $249 per month. Enterprise and agency plans cost $399 per month. All prices are billed annually.

24. Qualtrics Market Research Panels

Qualtrics takes away the hassle of finding respondents for your market research surveys. They provide an online sample service so you can access real, live human thoughts without having to actually manage any humans.

It’s an introverted marketer’s dream come true!

Once you’ve identified your target audience, head on over to Qualtrics and sign up to access a representative sample.

You can then use Qualtrics’ built-in platform to start gathering insights and information from the people whose pain points you might be able to help solve.

Pro tip: You can actually choose between Qualtrics’ built-in platform or using your own chosen survey software . Sometimes, you’re already familiar and comfy with one system or need to hustle with a program you know — Qualtrics lets you pick.

25. ProProfs Qualaroo

Qualaroo is an advanced user and market research tool that helps you understand your specific market with targeted surveys.

You can run surveys on over six channels at once — such as website, app, product, social media, and email — to get a 360-degree view of your existing and potential customers.

It comes packed with features like question branching, 12+ answer types, automatic survey language translation, in-depth audience targeting, pre-built survey templates, and an extensive repository of professionally designed questions.

You can create various market research surveys in minutes to collect data on the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral traits of your target audience.

It can help you map customers’ expectations and preferences, create customer personas, and perform audience segmentation.

Qualaroo also promotes quick feedback analysis. Its in-built AI-based sentiment analysis and text analytics engine automatically categorizes the responses based on user moods.

It also highlights the key phrases and words in real time, saving hours of manual work.

What we like: In my experience, you can get an awful lot done with just this one source for conducting market research. I like it for its rare combination of tool inclusivity and affordable pricing — it’s definitely a solid source to start with.

Pricing : Omni channel plans for up to 50 responses are free. Omni channel plans for businesses up to 100 responses cost $19.99 per month, billed annually. Email surveys up to 50 responses are free.

Email surveys for businesses up to 100 responses cost $9.99 per month, billed annually.

Conduct Market Research for a Successful Product Launch

Conducting market research is essential to a successful product launch to market.

With the tools I’ve just introduced you to, you can find out who’s looking for your product, why they need it, and how you can better market whatever you’re looking to launch.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Marketing Research

• First Online: 02 February 2019

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This chapter raises several applied perspectives on marketing research methods that need to be used in marketing research to support development of competitive strategies. The scope of marketing research, process of conducting marketing research, methodologies and research models, diverse research areas, and technology and market drivers for exploring future research have been addressed in this chapter. The principal objective of the chapter is to impart knowledge on skills on marketing research for managers to use it as a tool to support development of marketing strategies.

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What is Sales Analysis? Why is it important?

June 12, 2023 | By Hitesh Bhasin | Filed Under: Marketing

For every company , Sales is the ultimate revenue generator which takes care of all costs and expenses. While Sales may be achieved easily or in some cases in a very difficult way, analysis of the Sale that has materialized is very important.

Not only the how but also the why a particular sale has happened and why not has a sale not happened along with a periodic comparison of achieved Sales is very important for the organization. This helps them to give a logical answer of Sales instead of relying on gut-feeling. That is why Sales analysis is carried out from time to time. If you have heard about Sales reviews, then it is nothing but sales analysis carried out as a timely activity. 

Table of Contents

What is Sales analysis?

As the name suggests, sales analysis involves analysing the sales made by a company over a period of time. Many companies have a weekly sales analysis, a monthly sales analysis or a quarterly sales analysis. A regular sales analysis helps the company understand where they are performing better and where they need to improve.

Every company has a sales target which its salesmen have to achieve. If the target was to be achieved in a month, then on the 15th day of that month, the salesmen should know where they stand. This is where sales analysis plays it role. It helps determine where the company stands in terms of sales and then helps in sales strategy to reach a predetermined goal.

Sales analysis is done from the bottom level to the top level of the company. Even the CEO of the company does a sales analysis to understand segments where the company is gaining in sales and segments where it is dropping in sales. Such sales analysis can also help product development.

Importance of Sales Analysis

1) Missed opportunities :

Analyzing the available data can show the company where it has missed the opportunity and if or not that can be claimed. Market research will play an important role in this presenting data to compare while the field force will prove of valuable assistance in informing the practicalities of the situation.

2) Future decisions :

Sales data will help a company to take a future decision in terms of inventory management , marketing activities, schemes or offers to be rolled and changes in manufacturing processes if applicable. Based on Sales data, major decisions like continuing or discontinuing a product is taken. Those future decisions will help the external stakeholders of the company to decide whether or not to invest in the company.

3) Market Trends :

Sales analysis will also show the current market trends to the company. While the company may be preparing to launch a new product, Sales Analysis would show a drastic increase in Sales of the earlier product after an activity, showing that it was the lack of awareness which was a hindrance in realizing Sales and not the product. Also, Sales of a certain product may skyrocket during a festival or decrease seasonally.

4) Customer analysis :

 Effectively, Sales Analysis is nothing but Customer Analysis . Answering why did a particular customer buy the product in a particular month may give crucial customer insights which will help with the planning of the company.

5) Detailed analysis :

A detailed Sales Analysis is broken down product wise, customer wise, year and month wise and geography wise is a source of huge information for the company.

Types of Sales Analysis:

Although many companies may use various types tailored to fit their organization, here are the few common types of Sales Analysis performed :

1) Periodic Analysis :

This can be a month on month or year on year or year till date compared to previous year till date as the need may be. This gives insight into the impact of time on sales.

2) Product wise Analysis :

Sales of products during different times in different areas can be used. This is majorly used in large-scale equipment.

3) Channel of distribution wise :

 This will give the trend of where the sales are maximum and answering Why will give more insights and help the company decide whether or not to continue with the current channel of distribution .

4) Forecast vs Achievement analysis :

This gives the details of sales which were used to forecast the numbers – and inventory was arranged accordingly – and what is the actual achievement of Sales – and whether the inventory needs to refilled or schemes need to be rolled out for the liquidation of stocks.

5) Combination of above :

For more detailed analysis, the company may perform a combined analysis of above for example multinationals like Proctor and Gamble may analyze the Sales of Tide detergent in Asia Pacific region for the year 2018 and compare it with Sales of the year 2017. This involves Product as well as periodic sales.

Advantages of Sales Analysis :

1) Opportunities :

 Sales analysis of own products as well as competitor products is important as analyzing sales of competitors allows insights into the market from a different perspective and may help the company to reach the missed out customers and grab the missed opportunity.

2) Decision driver :

 Sales analysis, as explained above acts a decision driver for the company to make major changes in their products. If the Sales of a product are not up to the mark, the company may discontinue the product with immediate effect. For example, as the Sales of Touchscreen phones increased all the traditional button models changed their phones to touch screens. With the advent of Facebook and Twitter , earlier sites like Orkut had to be shut down because of lack of revenue and shift of audience from one platform to other.

3) Customer Service :

 Knowing the reason behind why a particular sales occurred during particular time will help the companies to keep the inventory ready and help them to serve the customers better. Delighting the customers will, in turn, benefit the company by increased sales further and help to develop goodwill and establish the brand value of the company.

4) Marketing support :

Sales of a certain product may require one-time marketing support or multiple times or seasonal support. Those decisions are taken based on Sales analysis. For example, products like cough syrup would require marketing and ad campaigns just before and during winter while airline services require constant marketing support.

Disadvantages of Sales Analysis :

1) reliability :.

A lot of times, Sales Analysis might have done in a haphazard way or the reasons for the increase in sales of a particular product may go up purely on the effort of the Salespersons or offers rolled out. This may have nothing to do with customer or trends and relying on those conclusions can be problematic for the company.

2) Political factors :

12 countries in Europe introduced a single currency in 2002 which caused temporary disruption of the economy. In such cases, even though the trend may say that the Sales is supposed to increase, owing to unavailability of purchasing power of customers, the company may face a dip in sales. The following year to this incident when the economy may again stabilize, comparing previous years’ data will show askew results again since the customers are purchasing normally as per their requirement but there would be a tremendous growth in the analysis.

3) Technical knowledge :

High technical knowledge is required for Sales Analysis and not everyone may be suited to do that. Good arithmetic skills along with high market knowledge are basic requirements and those may not be fulfilled by every Salesperson.

A detailed Sales Analysis along with its interpretation is outsourced by many companies. The dedicated firms or software may be costly which the company would have to bear regularly. Also, the privacy of data would be compromised when sharing the Sales data to the third party. A Sales analysis performed by an internal employee instead of outsourcing would increase the cost of the firm in terms of salary, training the person for technical knowledge and there are chances of human error in Manual Sales Analysis.

Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Sales

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• What is Primary sales, Secondary sales and Tertiary sales and what factors determine them?
• Why customer reviews and recommendations are most important nowadays?
• What is the Importance of Marketing Mix and why are the 4 P’s important?
• What is Brand Activation & Why is it Important?
• Importance of Retailing – Why Retail is Important?
• Brand Strategy – Steps, Components and Why it is Important for Business
• What is Authenticity and Why it is Important?
• What are Research Skills? And Why are they Important?
• What is Service Excellence? And Why it is Important & excellent

About Hitesh Bhasin

Hitesh Bhasin is the CEO of Marketing91 and has over a decade of experience in the marketing field. He is an accomplished author of thousands of insightful articles, including in-depth analyses of brands and companies. Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.

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B2B commercial analytics: What outperformers do

Key takeaways.

• Companies that effectively use analytics in service of marketing and sales performance are 1.5 times more likely to achieve above-average growth rates than their peers.
• B2B companies historically lag behind their B2C counterparts in adopting and deploying commercial analytics, but the ones who engage with the tools already outperform their peers; their return on sales are up to five percentage points higher than that of their counterparts.
• B2B companies are increasingly ready to invest in—and execute on—analytics. They should learn from the outperformers.

If outsized growth is the holy grail, adept use of commercial analytics is one clear way to get there, fast. Our research shows that B2B companies that effectively harness analytics in service to marketing and sales performance are 1.5 times more likely to achieve above-average growth rates than their competitors. Other B2B companies have taken notice.

Many business leaders seek to harness analytics to grow their businesses. But B2B companies have historically lagged behind their B2C counterparts in adopting and effectively employing commercial analytics. However, those that use the technology more effectively outperform their peers, using many techniques of B2C sales to engage prospects and customers and increase the lifetime value of each customer relationship (Exhibit 1). These outperformers also achieved up to five percentage points higher return on sales, a common measure of how efficiently companies convert sales into profits.

We have found that outperformers not only distinguish themselves by their methods, but by their consistency and clarity in strategizing for the challenges of the transition from the very beginning. Companies ready to invest in the pursuit of outsized growth would do well to take a page from the outperformers’ playbook by investing in these four critical areas.

The hurdles of analytics

B2B outperformers succeed at translating commercial analytics into profitable growth even as many B2B sectors are under threat from B2C companies, such as e-commerce companies with more advanced and sometimes superior e-commerce and analytics capabilities that have begun to encroach on B2B territory by offering industrial supplies.

B2B companies and their leaders realize that analytics are important. In a 2021 McKinsey survey of more than 2,500 respondents in six countries and more than ten industries, 64 percent of B2B companies indicated that they expect to increase their spending on predictive analytics. But they tend to fall short when it comes to applying the right resources throughout the entire overhaul of their commercial operations.

The problems start at the beginning of the process, when many companies struggle to identify goals for their analytics programs, such as preventing churn or increasing cross-sells. As a result, while every company has significant volumes of data, many B2B companies lack the capabilities to translate data into relevant, usable insights that help them to sell more effectively by improving their understanding of their customers’ experiences, needs, and triggers.

Efforts to boost commercial performance also often fall flat if frontline sales teams do not buy into new sales-support tools or incorporate them into the regular habits and cadences of their work. In short, many companies fail to plan for and execute on the ways analytics will create end-to-end changes in their commercial operations.

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Four behaviors for commercial analytics success.

Our study of B2B outperformers’ commercial analytics programs revealed four common behaviors. Before launching a program, they create internal agreement on the sources of commercial value for their organizations. From there, they assemble or develop the right analytics workforce. They facilitate the work of the analytics team by bringing together the right data tools to facilitate faster decision making and to foster capabilities and execution. Although many companies put similar efforts in place, the key to outperformance is effective, coordinated execution in all four areas.

Build consensus on sources of value

Analytics can do a lot if used effectively. But without agreement on what analytics to pursue, companies can waste resources and energy on programs that do not deliver value. Before embarking on a commercial analytics program, cross-functional teams should collaborate to figure out where the greatest value is, then work with commercial leaders to shift resources and effort to focus on those areas. Crucially, leadership should expect to iteratively improve their approach to analytics. For instance, not every use case, tool, or model is a good fit for every situation, but quick experimentation and decision making—in other words, failing quickly and investing in demonstrably viable use cases—can maximize learning and minimize waste.

A review of the customer lifecycle—acquisition, product-customer fit, pricing, and retention or reacquisition—can yield significant insight into the most important sources of value (Exhibit 2).

The most promising use cases can get sponsorship from at least one executive whose team can benefit from it relatively soon, can generate value quickly, and—particularly in larger companies—are clearly scalable. For example, a distributor realized that it had a significant churn problem. It lost customers who accounted for up to 30 percent of its sales every year, enough to offset its new-customer acquisition. The organization’s leaders decided to invest in decreasing churn before addressing other issues. This focused application of analytics resulted in an additional $5 million to $10 million of run rate (annualized revenue) in eight months.

Assemble the right analytics talent

Top analytics talent produces outsized returns: the best data scientists and engineers are ten to 50 times more productive than average performers. 1 Drew Hansen, “This LinkedIn data scientist suggests 10 ways to excel in her field,” Forbes , Nov 29, 2016, forbes.com. As a result, analytics talent is in demand in almost every sector. However, B2B companies can attract and retain the right talent by making their value proposition as employers clear. This proposition will vary for each company. For instance, companies whose analytics functions are less mature might highlight the opportunity to build a high-performing analytics team. While not all analytical problems are glamorous, many data scientists and engineers are interested in gaining industry-specific knowledge. One energy and materials company discovered that the data scientists and data engineers were keen to learn more about the industry and get involved with business teams, so it provided opportunities for the analytics workforce to develop a sense of connection to the company and industry in the form of cross-functional squads, who worked hand-in-hand during weekly sprints to solve a business problem. Another conglomerate initially failed to attract candidates to a far-flung office, but the number of applications skyrocketed when it moved the analytics hub to a major city.

To build an analytics team, companies should begin by hiring an analytics leader who can anchor the function and attract other analytics talent. Senior academics and analytics leaders from major tech companies are good candidates. 2 For more on anchor hires, see Matthias Daub, Ranja Reda Kouba, Kate Smaje, and Anna Wiesinger, “ How companies can win in the seven tech-talent battlegrounds ,” October 2020, McKinsey.com. The focus should initially be on hiring the right people instead of filling as many roles as possible. In addition to data scientists, companies should recruit strong data engineers and analytics translators to build the data foundation. 3 For more on analytics translators, see Nicolaus Henke, Jordan Levine, and Paul McInerney, “ Analytics translator: The new must-have role ,” February 2018, McKinsey.com.

While most B2B companies have in-house recruiters that can help find this talent, it is often critical to create a new way of working to hit the growth aspirations. For instance, one logistics company hired more than 50 digital roles within months, taking the average time to hire from ten months to three weeks for key roles such as data scientists and engineers. To do this, they used a blend of automated assessments and screening, upskilling recruiters through an in-house “war room” using agile principles to manage the candidate funnel and accelerate hiring, while supplementing with seasoned external recruiters for senior roles.

Working in the same location is often helpful in building and reinforcing team cultures. Companies should therefore ensure that the analytics team has the structure needed to work in an agile way in the first few years, even if not everyone is co-located (Exhibit 3). 4 For more on building an analytics team, see Gloria Macías-Lizaso Miranda, “ Building an effective analytics organization ,” October 2018, McKinsey. com; Matt Ariker, Tim McGuire, and Jesko Perrey, “ Five roles you need on your big data team ,” July 2013, McKinsey.com; and Oliver Fleming, Tim Fountaine, Nicolaus Henke, and Tamim Saleh, “ Ten red flags signaling your analytics program will fail ,” May 2018, McKinsey.com. For more on agile work in a hybrid or remote environment, see Quentin Jadoul, André Nascimento, Olli Salo, and Renato Willi, “ Agility in the time of COVID-19: Changing your operating model in an age of turbulence ,” November 2020, McKinsey.com.

By the numbers: What drives sales-growth outperformance

Use flexible data architecture, algorithms, and tools.

Effective data architecture, algorithms, and tools are already standard at companies that are successfully using analytics. The key is for companies just starting analytics work to move decisively with the data they have to begin gleaning insights as soon as possible and avoid the trap of sinking into a lengthy IT project.

For beginners, perfect is the enemy of the good. Almost all companies complain about their data quality. But in our experience, almost all companies also have good-enough internal data that can be immediately put to use in a minimum-viable-product version of a data lake. Companies typically only use only a small portion of their available data, but the new insights lie in the other 90 percent. Data such as inbound inquiries, on-time shipments, and call center notes can generate significant insights if they are properly linked. One organization had planned on a two-year data-lake project that would eventually support its work on alleviating global hunger. However, an initial analysis revealed that the organization really needed something that would support its initial set of analytics models. Readying the required data only took a month and allowed the preliminary models to run in 30 minutes at a cost of $2. In the meantime, the data-lake overhaul, an investment in infrastructure, proceeded in parallel.

Finally, any insights from analytics models should be paired with business judgment. In a cross-functional team, this input should come from a business-function leader who has direct responsibility for the commercial outcomes related to a customer, region, or group. This person should consult any other experts as needed. Having the voice of the business on the team can ensure that any insights are logical and ultimately understandable and actionable for the sales team.

Use change management to boost front-line execution

Analytics programs’ ultimate test is whether they are accepted by front-line sales teams, which makes the difference between boosting the company’s performance and having its efforts wither.

In our experience, even highly predictive models can be rejected by the front line if a tool they had not heard of until they were instructed to use it generates an incorrect recommendation. In those cases, the model’s failure is often a reason for sales teams to abandon a model that they find no reason to trust. The remedy for this pitfall is to involve frontline teams in the development of analytics tools. This approach builds trust in the tool and yields insight into the needs of both front-line teams and their customers.

Once tools are ready, front-line leaders and high performers should model and champion their use to reinforce sales teams’ knowledge of the tools’ efficacy. One company gathered its sales managers for a two-day training summit each time it launched new analytics tools for use cases such as pricing, churn, and cross-selling. This methodical approach helped the company grow its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) by more than 10 percent for several consecutive years.

Once tools are past the pilot stage, integrating them into the company’s roster of standard tools with which reps are familiar make them more acceptable to the front line. Indeed, an integrated insights dashboard has an air of permanence compared with the spreadsheets and ad hoc dashboards commonly used during pilots.

However effective or beneficial new tools are, it may be difficult for the salesforce to form new habits, especially when old habits are comfortable. Weekly routines can help frontline reps integrate new analytics tools into their working cadence. One company implemented a set of weekly reviews designed to integrate analytics insights into the sales function’s work. Another company tracked sales reps based on the frequency with which they use their analytics tools and how often they acted on analytics driven insights. The sales reps who consistently used the insights achieved better results over time, which accelerated the adoption of those tools.

Companies should also use insights to personalize rep-specific targets. For example, one company used pricing analytics to set specific price-increase targets for each rep. The reps didn’t have to implement every new insight to hit their targets, so they retained a sense of control.

Finally, new insights tools can reveal opportunities for cross-functional collaborations. Insights often have implications for nonsales teams. For instance, one company that built a tool to analyze churn found that 50 percent of its open service issues remained unresolved, a significant failure that contributed to customer defections. In response, leaders organized weekly district reviews of the customers that most at risk of churn. Supply chain, sales, and customer service all participated in rectifying the situation. The use cases identified in the first six months were worth $20 million to $30 million.

The timely and effective adoption of commercial analytics tools and techniques offers B2B companies undeniable strategic advantages. By learning from the outperformers, others in the sector can improve their performance and even build defensible advantages.

Warren Davis is a partner in McKinsey’s Houston office, Ryan Gavin is a partner in the Boston office, Sinem Hostetter is an associate partner in the Chicago office, and Wilson McCrory is a partner in the Charlotte office.

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2024 Housing Market Forecast and Predictions: Housing Affordability Finally Begins to Turnaround

As we look ahead to 2024 , we see a mix of continuity and change in both the housing market and economy. Against a backdrop of modest economic growth, slightly higher unemployment, and easing inflation longer term interest rates including mortgage rates begin a slow retreat. The shift from climbing to falling mortgage rates improves housing affordability, but saps some of the urgency home shoppers had previously sensed. Less frenzied housing demand and plenty of rental home options keep home sales relatively stable at low levels in 2024, helping home prices to adjust slightly lower even as the number of for-sale homes continues to dwindle. 

Realtor.com ® 2024 Forecast for Key Housing Indicators

Home Prices Dip, Improving Affordability

Home prices grew at a double-digit annual clip for the better part of two years spanning the second half of 2020 through 2022, a notable burst following a growing streak that spanned back to 2012. As mortgage rates climbed, home price growth flatlined, actually declining on an annual basis in early 2023 before an early-year dip in mortgage rates spurred enough buyer demand to reignite competition for still-limited inventory. Home prices began to climb again, and while they did not reach a new monthly peak, on average for the year we expect that the 2023 median home price will slightly exceed the 2022 annual median.

Nevertheless, even during the brief period when prices eased, using a mortgage to buy a home remained expensive. Since May 2022, purchasing the typical for-sale home listing at the prevailing rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 20% down payment meant forking over a quarter or more of the typical household paycheck. In fact, in October 2023, it required 39% of the typical household income and this share is expected to average 36.7% for the full calendar year in 2023. This figure has typically ranged around 21%, so it is well above historical average. We expect that the return to pricing in line with financing costs will begin in 2024, and home prices, mortgage rates, and income growth will each contribute to the improvement. Home prices are expected to ease slightly, dropping less than 2% for the year on average. Combined with lower mortgage rates and income growth this will improve the home purchase mortgage payment share relative to median income to an average 34.9% in 2024, with the share slipping under 30% by the end of the year.

Home Sales Barely Budge Above 2023’s Likely Record Low

After soaring during the pandemic, existing home sales were weighed down in the latter half of 2022 as mortgage rates took off, climbing from just over 3% at the start of the year to a peak of more than 7% in the fourth quarter. The reprieve in mortgage rates in early 2023, when they dipped to around 6%, brought some life to home sales, but the renewed climb of mortgage rates has again exerted significant pressure on home sales that is exacerbated by the fact that a greater than usual number of households bought homes over the past few years, and despite stories of pandemic purchase regret , for the most part, these homeowners continue to be happy in their homes. 

This is consistent with what visitors to Realtor.com report when asked why they are not planning to sell their homes. The number one reason homeowners aren’t trying to sell is that they just don’t need to; concern about losing an existing low-rate mortgage is the top financial concern cited. Our current projection is for 2023 home sales to tally just over 4 million, a dip of 19% over the 2022 5 million total. 

With many of the same forces at play heading into 2024, the housing chill will continue, with sales expected to remain essentially unchanged at just over 4 million. Although mortgage rates are expected to ease throughout the course of the year, the continuation of high costs will mean that existing homeowners will have a very high threshold for deciding to move, with many likely choosing to stay in place.  Moves of necessity–for job changes, family situation changes, and downsizing to a more affordable market–are likely to drive home sales in 2024. 

Shoppers Find Even Fewer Existing Homes For Sale

Even before the pandemic, housing inventory was on a long, slow downward trajectory. Insufficient building meant that the supply of houses did not keep up with household formation and left little slack in the housing market. Both homeowner and rental vacancy remain below historic averages . In contrast with the existing home market, which remains sluggish, builders have been catching up, with construction remaining near pre-pandemic highs for single-family and hitting record levels for multi-family . 

Despite this, the lack of excess capacity in housing has been painfully obvious in the for-sale home market. The number of existing homes on the market has dwindled. With home sales activity to continue at a relatively low pace, the number of unsold homes on the market is also expected to remain low.  Although mortgage rates are expected to begin to ease, they are expected to exceed 6.5% for the calendar year. This means that the lock-in effect, in which the gap between market mortgage rates and the mortgage rates existing homeowners enjoy on their outstanding mortgage, will remain a factor. Roughly two-thirds of outstanding mortgages have a rate under 4% and more than 90% have a rate less than 6%.

Rental Supply Outpaces Demand to Drive Mild Further Decline in Rents

After almost a full year of double-digit rent growth between mid-2021 and mid-2022, the rental market has finally cooled down, as evidenced by the year-over-year decline that started in May 2023 . In 2024, we expect the rental market will closely resemble the dynamics witnessed in 2023, as the tug of war between supply and demand results in a mild annual decline of -0.2% in the median asking rent.

New multi-family supply will continue to be a key element shaping the 2024 rental market.  In the third quarter of 2023, the annual pace of newly completed multi-family homes stood at 385,000 units. Although absorption rates remained elevated in the second quarter, especially at lower price points, the rental vacancy rate ticked up to 6.6% in the third quarter. This uptick in rental vacancy suggests the recent supply has outpaced demand, but context is important. After recent gains, the rental vacancy rate is on par with its level right before the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, still below its 7.2% average from the 2013 to 2019 period.  Looking ahead, the strong construction pipeline– which hit a record high for units under construction this summer –is expected to continue fueling rental supply growth in 2024 pushing rental vacancy back toward its long-run average. 

While the surge in new multi-family supply gives renters options, the sheer number of renters will minimize the potential price impact. The median asking rent in 2024 is expected to drop only slightly below its 2023 level. Renting is expected to continue to be a more budget friendly option than buying in the vast majority of markets, even though home prices and mortgage rates are both expected to dip, helping pull the purchase market down slightly from record unaffordability. 

Young adult renters who lack the benefit of historically high home equity to tap into for a home purchase will continue to find the housing market challenging. Specifically, as many Millennials age past first-time home buying age and more Gen Z approach these years, the current housing landscape is likely to keep these households in the rental market for a longer period as they work to save up more money for the growing down payment needed to buy a first home. This trend is expected to sustain robust demand for rental properties. Consequently, we anticipate that rental markets favored by young adults , a list which includes a mix of affordable areas and tech-heavy job markets in the South, Midwest, and West, will be rental markets to watch in 2024.

Key Wildcards:

• Wildcard 1: Mortgage Rates With both mortgage rates and home prices expected to turn the corner in 2024, record high unaffordability will become a thing of the past, though as noted above, the return to normal won’t be accomplished within the year. This prediction hinges on the expectation that inflation will continue to subside, enabling the recent declines in longer-term interest rates to continue. If inflation were to instead see a surprise resurgence, this aspect of the forecast would change, and home sales could slip lower instead of steadying.
• Wildcard 2: Geopolitics In our forecast for 2023 , we cited the risk of geopolitical instability on trade and energy costs as something to watch. In addition to Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, instability in the Middle East has not only had a catastrophic human toll, both conflicts have the potential to impact the economic outlook in ways that cannot be fully anticipated. 
• Wildcard 3: Domestic Politics: 2024 Elections In 2020, amid the upheaval of pandemic-era adaptations, many Americans were on the move. We noted that Realtor.com traffic patterns indicated that home shoppers in very traditionally ‘blue’ or Democratic areas were tending to look for homes in markets where voters have more typically voted ‘red’ or Republican. While consumers also reported preferring to live in locations where their political views align with the majority , few actually reported wanting to move for this reason alone. 

Housing Perspectives:

What will the market be like for homebuyers, especially first-time homebuyers.

First-time homebuyers will continue to face a challenging housing market in 2024, but there are some green shoots. The record-high share of income required to purchase the median priced home is expected to begin to decline as mortgage rates ease, home prices soften, and incomes grow. In 2023 we expect that for the year as a whole, the monthly cost of financing the typical for-sale home will average more than $2,240, a nearly 20% increase over the mortgage payment in 2022, and roughly double the typical payment for buyers in 2020. This amounted to a whopping nearly 37% of the typical household income. In 2024 as modest price declines take hold and mortgage rates dip, the typical purchase cost is expected to slip just under $2,200 which would amount to nearly 35% of income. While far higher than historically average, this is a significant first step in a buyer-friendly direction.

How can homebuyers prepare? 

Homebuyers can prepare for this year’s housing market by getting financially ready. Buyers can use a home affordability calculator , like this one at Realtor.com to translate their income and savings into a home price range. And shoppers can pressure test the results by using a mortgage calculator to consider different down payment, price, and loan scenarios to see how their monthly costs would be impacted. Working with a lender can help potential buyers explore different loan products such as FHA or VA loans that may offer lower mortgage interest rates or more flexible credit criteria. 

Although prices are anticipated to fall in 2024, housing costs remain high, and a down payment can be a big obstacle for buyers. Recent research shows that the typical down payment on a home reached a record high of $30,000 .  To make it easier to cobble together a down payment, shoppers can access information about down payment assistance options at Realtor.com/fairhousing and in the monthly payment section of home listing pages. Furthermore, home shoppers can explore loan products geared toward helping families access homeownership by enabling down payments as low as 3.5% in the case of FHA loans and 0% in the case of VA loans .

What will the market be like for home sellers?

Home sellers are likely to face more competition from builders than from other sellers in 2024. Because builders are continuing to maintain supply and increasingly adapting to market conditions, they are increasingly focused on lower-priced homes and willing to make price adjustments when needed. As a result, potential sellers will want to consider the landscape for new construction housing in their markets and any implications for pricing and marketing before listing their home for sale.

What will the market be like for renters?

In 2024, renting is expected to continue to be a more cost-effective option than buying in the short term even though we anticipate the advantage for renting to diminish as home prices and mortgage rates decline. 

However, for those considering the pursuit of long-term equity through homeownership, it’s essential to not only stay alert about market trends but also to carefully consider the intended duration of residence in their next home. When home prices rise rapidly, like they did during the pandemic, the higher cost of purchasing a home may break even with the cost of renting in as little as 3 years. Generally, it takes longer to reach the breakeven point, typically within a 5 to 7-year timeframe. Importantly, when home prices are falling and rents are also declining, as is expected to be the case in 2024, it can take longer to recoup some of the higher costs of buying a home. Individuals using Realtor.com’s Rent vs. Buy Calculator can thoroughly evaluate the costs and benefits associated with renting versus buying over time and how many years current market trends suggest it will take before buying is the better financial decision. This comprehensive tool can provide insights tailored to a household’s specific rent versus buying decision and empowers consumers to consider not only the optimal choice for the current month but also how the trade-offs evolve over several years.

Local Market Predictions:

All real estate is local and while the national trends are instructive, what matters most is what’s expected in your local market. 

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U.S. Retailer Industry Foot Traffic Analysis | April 2024

Colliers Retail Market Intelligence

Higher average tax refunds in 2024 boosted consumer spending, leading to a 4.0% increase in April retail sales and a 3.5% rise in foot traffic over the year.

Apparel store visits rose by 3.44%, yet sales dropped by 0.9% in value, affected by weaker promotions and less appealing ranges after a March spending spree, underscoring challenges in the unstable clothing market.

Grocery visits and sales dropped by 1.41% and 0.9% due to aggressive pricing that squeezed margins. A 1.65% rise in restaurant visits offered relief and helped curb consumer inflation.

While visits at department stores rose by 5.15%, sales fell 5.3% due to an early Easter and subpar retail offerings.

Related Experts

Nicole Larson

Manager, National Retail Research

Fort Lauderdale

As the National Research Manager for Retail Services, Nicole is responsible for studying conditions within the retail sector, collecting and reporting statistical data, and analyzing the data to identify significant trends and opportunities. Based in South Florida, she partners with national and local teams across the United States to deliver market intelligence initiatives to drive national competitive advantage through research strategy, development, and analytics.

Nicole has been in the commercial real estate industry since 2014, is bilingual in Spanish, and holds a Florida Real Estate Associate License. Enthusiastic about exploring the dynamic realms of the retail industry, she enjoys continual learning, seamlessly blending curiosity and enjoyment in every pursuit.

Anjee Solanki

National Director, Retail Services & Practice Groups

San Francisco

AREA OF EXPERTISE

In Anjee’s current role, as National Director, Retail Services and Practice Groups for the U.S., she provides strategic leadershipto more than 500 retail professionalsnationally across 156 offices withinColliers — covering investment sales,agency, retailer representation, andasset repositioning advisory services.

Anjee Solanki brings 30 years of focused retail estate experience, and world-class expertise regarding everything retail to Colliers International. She provides strategic retail advisory services to enhance value for her clients with her expertise in lifestyle, community, power center, neighborhood, mixed-use retail/residential, and resort retail. 

She has developed and manages strong working relationships with institutional and private clients such as State of Florida, State of Michigan, Heitman, Invesco, Grosvenor Americas, American Realty Advisors, TH Realty, PNC, and Zurich to name a few.

Her strategy identifies current market and property inefficiencies to capture untapped value through asset repositioning, releasing, redevelopment, rehabilitation, proactive management, and enhanced marketing. 

Creative problem-solving is her specialty, and she becomes a key stakeholder with national and international retailers, such as JPMC, Opry City Stage/Ole Red and Tim Hortons, and many others. Her highly focused approach reduces the risk profile and provides clients with a thoughtful approach executing strategic multi-year planning initiatives. 

BUSINESS BACKGROUND

Previously, Anjee served as Executive Vice President, Retail Services for Madison Marquette. She successfully assisted with repositioning community centers to lifestyle projects and identified opportunities to create value, resulting in higher returns for her clients. She also provided strategic analysis on complex redevelopment projects to address both the asset’s financial stabilization and/or the client’s exit strategy

Anjee continues to be an insatiable collector of all things retail. She’s a student of culture living next door to future shoppers, whose fleeting trends constantly change the retail landscape … driving retailers, landlords and developers crazy! Read her Blog at:  https://knowledge-leader.colliers.com/author/anjee-solanki 

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Anjee is originally from Southern California and currently resides in San Francisco.  She is active in the Rincon Hill neighborhood residential improvement group, which participates in the public review of the highly anticipated Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco.  

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