What Are Sales Insights? Complete Guide for Managers

You can have the best sales script in the world, but if you’re not getting in front of ICP-fit buyers at a time when they’re ready to buy, you’ll be pushing a very heavy rock up a very steep hill.

Here’s the challenge:

Many sales teams have the data they need to find in-market buyers (third-party intent data, for example) or to select accounts that likely have a good use case for their tool (firmographic and technographic data).

The problem is, it’s just data. It’s a lot of information to sift through to find what you need to get your job done.

That’s where sales insights come in.

They take that data and turn it into actionable information, like which accounts and prospects to prioritise, with what touchpoints, and with what kind of messaging.

In this guide, we’ll explore what sales insights are, why they’re important, where to get them, and how your GTM team can use sales insights to close deals.

What are sales insights? 

Sales insights are the actionable interpretation of sales data.

What does that mean?

Sales teams have a ton of data. At the very least, you’ve got customer details in your CRM, notes from sales calls, and data from customer engagement with your ads, website, and content.

Most revenue teams also have an additional data enrichment service, which pulls in additional data like:

• Verified phone numbers.
• B2B email addresses for all buying group members.
• Technographic data, like the software that target companies use.
• Firmographic intel, like company headcount or annual revenue.
• Third-party intent data from engagement with ads, reviews, and search behaviour.

That’s a lot of information, but that raw data doesn’t do a lot on its own.

It’s the analysis of that data that tells you what actions you should take, and that’s exactly what sales insights do.

Sometimes it’s just the culmination of data that helps you make a smart decision.

For example:

Knowing that a given customer is in the FinTech industry might be helpful for that account’s CSM, but it’s not really a sales insight on the grander level.

However, knowing that 65% of your long-term, high-ticket customers are in FinTech helps fuel sales strategy, define your ICP (ideal customer profile) and marketing approach. It allows your team to align better on the deals that will drive revenue growth.

In most cases, tools that offer sales insights use artificial intelligence and machine learning to process, analyse, and interpret that data and tell you what to do with it.

For instance, a sales insights tool might see these data points for a company:

• It meets your ICP requirements for company size, industry, and existing tech stack.
• One of the Marketing VPs (a buyer persona for you) is researching your category right now.
• Someone else at the account has been comparing two of your competitors on G2.

The insight here is then presented not just as a set of individual data points, but as a single insight, often even a suggestion:

Why do sales insights matter?

So what kind of real-world benefits can revenue teams expect to see from sales insights?

They can:

• Help you identify and prioritise accounts demonstrating buying intent, improving sales productivity and targeting accuracy.
• Provide relevant talking points and assist sales teams in personalising outreach.
• Enable teams to contact decision-makers faster and speed up sales cycles.
• Increase deal win rates by helping reps position themselves against competitors.
• Improve customer relationships through tailored communications.

Sales managers often use insights to determine how best to pursue a given account or engage a specific contact.

But they can be applied even more broadly, informing your entire revenue strategy. Sales insights can drive territory planning and forecasting, helping you to understand which geographies, industries, and company sizes perform best.

They can also enable insight-driven sales execution, such as helping you understand which talking points, outreach flows, or sales enablement content win more deals.

What are the different types of sales insights?

So, where do sales insights come from?

Ultimately, it depends on what kinds of data you’re gathering or integrating, but the most common types are:

Buyer intent signals

Intent signals can be engagement with your website, third-party publications, search behaviour, and activity on review sites like G2.

They help you decide which accounts and prospects to target and with what messaging.

Engagement data

Engagement data on email open rates, call logs, and scheduled or undertaken demos are pulled from your CRM and sales engagement tools.

This data helps you review sales effectiveness, inform targeting, and determine priorities.

Conversion rates and pipeline metrics

This information is pulled from your revenue tech stack.

It helps you understand how well your team performs within different categories or industries. With this, you can improve sales campaign targeting.

Contact-level vs. account-level insights

Some tools can tell you where an account is at (such as estimating the buying stage), while others focus on the level of the contact (this person demonstrated interest in an aspect of your product).

Trends by region, industry, deal stage, etc.

Zooming out to see where your revenue team performs best will help you narrow down your targeting.

It also helps you understand aspects of sales success, such as velocity. With these insights, you can improve territory planning.

How do revenue teams use sales insights in practice?

Sales insights, much like the raw sales data behind them, are only as good as what you do with them.

Here are a few real-world use cases that demonstrate how teams use sales insights on a day-to-day basis:

• An SDR prioritises their daily call schedule based on funding, acquisition, and job change intent signals delivered to them via Cognism Sales Companion.
• A sales leader analyses the pipeline and identifies stalled deals. He then works with the AE to form a plan for resolving objections.
• An AE tailors their pitch based on buyer ad interaction, delivered to them via an integration from marketing’s advertising tool.
• RevOps uncovers win/loss patterns by region or product line, and works with the sales and product marketing teams to adjust messaging or targeting.

How do you collect sales insights?

Collecting sales and customer insights isn’t about scouring the internet or social media for tidbits of information.

While you can do it that way (and it’s how many salespeople found success before there was revenue technology), it’s very manual and time-consuming.

If you’re like most sales teams, though, the data needed for actionable insights comes from two key places:

1. Your existing sales tech stack.
2. An external provider of company, contact, and intent data.

The best insights come from the combination and interpretation of data from both sources. Here’s how it works 👇

Data from your sales tech stack

• Your CRM and sales engagement tools contribute data like deal stage by account and win rates by industry and company size.
• Your conversation intelligence platform will provide details on common objections raised and which competitors are typically involved in the decision set.
• Your marketing software adds context on what types of content prospects engage with, what website pages move them through the sales pipeline, and what kind of ad messaging resonates with stakeholders.

Data from external providers

• Your B2B contact data provider fleshes out the buying group with additional prospects to go after. It also adds firmographic and technographic intel, like what complementary tools the company uses.
• Your intent data provider gives you an understanding of the topics prospects search for and engage with online, as well as what competitors they learn about on review sites.

Did you know?

Cognism delivers all of the above data you need to form actionable insights, alongside search intent data from Bombora, firmographic intel like company headcount, and real-time buying signals like funding announcements.

It helps you build a full picture of what’s needed to move each prospect and account through the pipeline.

⚠️ Click here to find out more about Cognism.

Making the data actionable

This is where the magic happens.

Your CRM, sales tools, data enrichment service, and intent data providers connect to your sales analytics or insights platform, helping you decide what action to take with each account or fueling larger-scale moves like targeting shifts.

At the account level, you could uncover insights like:

• This buyer has stopped opening sales emails since last week. Re-engage via LinkedIn.
• They viewed the pricing page 4 times yesterday. Likely in the decision stage.
• Only the technical evaluator is engaging. The economic buyer hasn’t been looped in.
• They’re also talking to Competitor X based on the keywords mentioned on the last call.
• Your last call’s objection was about integration. Send them the integration case study.
• Customer churn risk flagged. They reduced the seat count last month and stopped attending QBRs.

Or if you’re searching for company-level insights to fuel more strategic changes, you might learn about:

• Customer behaviour trends: “LinkedIn leads convert 2x more than email leads.”
• Sales process bottlenecks: “Deals stall at the proposal stage for enterprise sales.”
• Rep performance patterns: “Top-performing reps follow up within the first 24 hours.”
• Product or pricing feedback: “Mid-market prospects often cite pricing as a blocker, unlike enterprise buyers.”
• Sales forecasting accuracy: “Deals forecasted at 80% likelihood only close 40% of the time.”

What are the best tools for collecting and analysing sales insights?

Today’s GTM teams are spoiled for choice when it comes to software for gathering insights.

These are a few of our favourites and what kind of intel they can deliver:

1. Sales intelligence platforms like Cognism Sales Companion: Supplies company, contact, and firmographic intel on target accounts, plus buying signals like funding rounds, job changes, and intent signals that help reps prioritise outreach.
2. Call intelligence solutions like Gong: Analyses sales calls and meetings, surfacing insights on deal risks, objection handling, talk time balance, and what top-performing reps do differently.
3. CRM and pipeline analytics platforms like Salesforce: Enables end-to-end visibility into deal progress, rep activity, and pipeline velocity. These platforms provide insights at the deal level and allow users to zoom out and examine broader trends that inform strategy.
4. Revenue intelligence tools like Clari: Combines CRM data, calendars, and calls to highlight pipeline health, forecast accuracy, and risk at the deal, rep, or team level.
5. BI tools like Looker: Offers more advanced and technical solutions that enable custom insights across sales, marketing, and customer success. Helpful for creating tailored dashboards and uncovering trends that might not be visible in standard CRM views.

What should you look for in a sales insight tool?

When looking for a sales insight tool, it’s important to go beyond raw data and find a solution that guides your sales process.

Here’s what to look out for:

• Real-time, actionable insights: Not just data, but clear cues on what to do next.
• Contact-level visibility: So reps can tailor outreach to specific stakeholders.
• CRM and sales engagement integrations: For seamless handoff between insight and execution.
• Alerts and prioritisation cues: To help reps focus on high-impact accounts.
• Guided workflows: Recommendations on touchpoints, messaging, and timing.
• Ease of use and setup: So your team actually adopts it.
• Compliance and scalability: Especially important for global GTM teams.

How does Cognism provide actionable sales insights?

Sales insights only work if they’re timely, targeted, and easy to act on. That’s where Cognism stands out.

Here’s how Cognism helps teams move faster and close smarter:

• Contact data: Diamond Data® gives reps accurate, phone-verified contact data for the right stakeholders when they’re ready to hear from you.
• Intent data: Cognism’s signal data tracks real-world buying triggers like funding rounds, job changes, tech stack shifts, and intent signals. It then surfaces these as prioritised cues inside your workflow. Combine that with Bombora-powered search intent, and you’ve got the actions you need to guide your messaging and outreach strategy.
• Integrated workflow: Sales Companion brings insights directly into your favourite tools (e.g. LinkedIn via the browser extension, Salesforce via a native integration), helping reps take immediate, informed action.
• Rep-level guidance: Offers prioritisation and personalisation suggestions, so reps know which contacts to engage and how to frame their outreach.
• Compliance and scalability: Fully GDPR- and CCPA-compliant, with global coverage and local accuracy.

Talk to Cognism today and discover our powerful sales insights! 👇