OREANDA-NEWS. May 26, 2016. If there was ever a time in sales when you could use a wingman, it’s now.

Changed B2B buyers, the growth of inside sales, and an explosion of unbridled data, can make sales leaders feel that they’re flying by themselves in a dense fog with hidden obstacles all around them.

Yet, just when navigation seems futile, the whirring hum of your wingman’s propeller directs you to the right course. In a transformed selling landscape, analytics have become this digital wingman for sales leaders.

Here are three ways that sales analytics act like a wingman for modern sales leaders – empowering you to make the best decisions to lead your team to success.

1. Analytics provide situational awareness

A good wingman continuously monitors his personal situation, as well as those of his fellow airmen – and understands how different scenarios can potentially impact the squadron.

Similarly, to manage their team effectively, sales leaders need to know what’s happening across their organization and at all stages in their sales funnel. Analytics deliver these insights with visibility into individual rep and team behaviors.

Analytics can show leaders how reps engage with prospects at-a-glance and let them quickly compare, for example, connect rates across the team. If one rep’s connect rate falls below the average, analytics show leaders what behaviors are missing that could be causing the gap. That knowledge gives leaders the ability to coach the team to the right activities and activity levels.

2. Analytics increase the strength of the team

Having a wingman increases your firepower.

Consider the power of adding analytics to your team’s prospecting efforts. Time saved chasing down poor leads can be directed toward the right opportunities. By helping your team get to a ‘no’ faster, analytics accelerate the sales cycle and lets you focus the team efforts on areas where they can have the biggest impact.

Consider the power of analytics to understand what processes are most effective for your organization. By repeating the processes that work the best, you can increase your team’s productivity with repeatable and proven practices and onboard new reps faster to build a stronger team.

3. Analytics facilitate dynamic processes

A wingman enables more dynamic tactics and maneuvers. By keeping an eye out for movement and potential problems, they can quickly react to changes in their surroundings and intervene in situations as needed.

According to CSO Insights, companies that use dynamic processes outperform others in terms of reps making quota and plan attainment. These companies are constantly looking to see what’s changed and anticipating what comes next, so they can adjust their processes.

Emerging analytics make it easier for sales leaders to apply a dynamic approach to the sales process. They help sales leaders course correct in real-time, rather than waiting until the end of the quarter to assess what went wrong – when it’s too late. By seeing that a rep’s activity level is too low, leaders can step in and make adjustments in real-time. By seeing that prospect engagement for a particular deal has gone silent, you can recalibrate your sales forecast or drive team efforts in a new direction.

At the end of the day, sales leaders are responsible for the success or failure of their team. They are the ones that need to be sure that their team is set up for success.

However, to do this, they first need to set themselves up for success. In B2B sales today, this requires insight – into rep, team, and buyer behaviors – and the ability to apply data in new ways to gain a business advantage. Serving as a digital wingman, analytics can provide you with both.

Suresh Balasubramanian is CEO for LiveHive, Inc., provider of an open and extensible Sales Acceleration Platform. Suresh is a seasoned software industry executive with more than 20 years of operations and senior management experience. Before LiveHive, Suresh served as CEO for Armor5, and GM worldwide at Adobe Software.