The Search Is Over: Guided Selling Is on the Rise Sales teams are looking for signals and insights to augment their day-to-day selling activities. With data analytics, the search is over. 58% of sales organizations will increase their investment in actionable analytics, which reveal new opportunities to connect with customers and prospects, within the next 12 months. In which type of analytics is Sales investing? % % 53 Predictive 49 Descriptive applies statistical models and aggregates and mines data to provide forecasting techniques to data to a summary of historical data to answer: “What is likely to happen?” answer: “What has happened?” % % 48 Discovery 38 Diagnostic searches data for patterns to examines data to identify the reveal previously unknown data likely cause to answer: relationships to answer: “Why did this happen?” “Could this happen?” % % 32 Prescriptive 8 Contextual uses optimization and simulation detects the impact of environmental algorithms to answer: and circumstantial factors, such as “What should we do?” weather, to answer: “Does this affect what happens?” The State of Salesforce Sales 21