“Data-driven.” “Analytical thinker.” “Strong reporting orientation.” These seem like requirements you’re more likely to see on a job posting for a business analyst -- not a sales role. But that’s not always the case in high-performance sales teams.

Employees, consumers, mobile devices, and companies themselves are more connected than ever, generating tremendous amounts of data and giving more insight into how your business is running.

While some companies race to staff new teams of analysts to work with this data, companies that are truly embracing this new era are putting their data directly in the hands of the sales, service, and marketing teams.

While data orientation has not knocked account planning out of the number one spot on job requirements for sales just yet, understanding the impact data has on your sales strategy is an extreme competitive advantage for salespeople.

While traditional salespeople make their best guesses on how they’re doing on putting together a great forecast and a healthy pipeline, a data-driven sales rep knows exactly where they need to tweak their priorities and how to build the calendar for each week, in order to win.

The influx of new business data has removed the blindfold for sales. Salespeople can now understand their customers and their sales processes better than ever before. While this new data-driven era of sales can seem intimidating, here are three ways you can embrace it:

1. Start Every Meeting with a Dashboard

Dashboards can accelerate your team’s success. A great dashboard helps focus everyone on the crucial drivers of success and constant, consistent focus keeps everyone agile, making the adjustments needed to crush quotas.

2. Track Forecasts and Pipeline Funnels

Asking how much value resides in each stage of a rep’s pipeline is a good start, but using dashboards to track each team’s work on its forecast, distinct from its pipeline of next quarter’s deals, keeps the balance of effort in the right place.

3. Keep Up the Chatter to Drive the Win

Today’s sales teams are more collaborative than ever and just as competitive. Sharing dashboards to "catch them doing it right" drives the behaviors that lead to success and kill the distractions. There’s nothing more motivating that checking the scoreboard after every customer call.

As the power and importance of analytics to the sales process continues to become more and more evident, companies will scramble to catch up to the early adopters that take data into their own hands and shape it into a serious competitive advantage. If you are looking to get a leg up on the competition,  “analytics experience is a plus.”

For even more insight into running your sales team with analytics, tune into the free webinar Sales Leaders: Manager Your Business with Howard Dresner, TODAY, May 20th, at 11 am PST / 2 pm EST. Click the button to register.