Ask HN: How to become a more data-driven person/employee?

[seabj0rn]

I have been doing SaaS sales for a YC company for 2 years now and am by far the top performer and top revenue driver for my company. I love closing deals and have a natural ability for sales, however I know that I am lacking in taking a data-driven approach to my work.

As opportunities open to progress into management roles, I want to start refining my aptitude for identifying patterns and relationships in data making informed data-driven decisions.

If anyone has resources or recommendations for building up this skill-set, it would be much appreciated!

[joeclark77]

Just a first quick thought here... if you want to proceed into management, you'll want to show that you can not only sell but also help other salespeople improve their performance. How will they know they're improving? You could start with some very simple metrics -- total $ of sales, avg $ sales per customer, # of calls made, % of leads that have closed -- and start plotting them on a daily or weekly basis with a retrospective meeting. You should be able to do this with spreadsheets, and gather the data from your co-workers daily during a 15-minute coffee break. See what the data tells you. See if you can help somebody improve their metrics.