From the sales frontlines to advanced analytics — How my experience has helped me be effective with analytics
By Nadani Mendi
Transitioning from the sales frontline at a leading FMCG company in Sri Lanka to advanced analytics marked a significant career shift into the realm of Data and Advanced Analytics. My sales experience has equipped me with valuable skills and perspectives, enabling effective engagement in analytics, particularly in a relatable work stream at OCTAVE. Here’s how my experience in sales has contributed to my current role as an Analytics Delivery Associate.
Key skills that helped to shape my journey at OCTAVE.
Domain Knowledge: Having worked on the sales frontline, I have a commendable understanding about distribution, sales processes, and the challenges faced by sales teams. Below are few examples that domain knowledge has helped me unlock value.
· Understand the business problems.
· Ask the right questions to solve issues.
· Identify relevant metrics and KPIs for the customer.
As a delivery associate, it’s crucial to keep the end customer in mind. My experience has helped me maintain this focus, aligning deliverables with customer requirements. This customer-centric approach has supported drive better decision-making and ultimately improve business outcomes.
Resilience and Adaptability: Sales environments are dynamic. It requires resilience and quick adaptation to changing market conditions and customer needs. These traits are invaluable in the field of analytics in scenarios such as:
· Encountering setback in projects.
· Unexpected challenges presented by data.
· Evolving methodologies used.
Monitoring and ensuring on time completion of data collection with the business unit was given to me as an initial task. It was not an easy task due to practical challenges faced during the process. Due to insufficient level of required data, it even posted a major risk to the rollout timeframe. After multiple discussions with the stakeholders, we revised the strategies to meet the deadline. Finally, within a short period of time the team completed the task successfully.
Focus on Results: Like in sales, the ultimate goal of analytics delivery is to drive results and add value to the business. My experience has instilled in me a results-oriented mindset. I prioritize delivering actionable insights that enable clients to make informed decisions and achieve their business objectives.
Overcoming Challenges along the journey
Every journey comes with its own set of challenges. My role as an analytics delivery associate requires effective communication with both the customer and the technical team. Effective collaboration with data scientists, data engineers and other technical individuals is essential in advanced analytics projects. One of the challenges that I faced was communicating requirements related to deliverables. The messages had to be clear and simple to ensure efficient completion of deliverables. It required understanding the set of technical terms and processes that’s used by the team.
Working in a profession in sales enabled me to identify customer needs. And decisions are often influenced by intuition, experience, and interpersonal dynamics. However, analytical thinking involves a different set of problem-solving skills like,
· Analyzing data
· Identifying patterns
· Deriving meaningful insights
It requires a structured and analytical approach that was challenging for me as an individual transitioning from sales. With the immense support of my team members, I was able to learn the required skills.
Despite these challenges, the experience so far has been rewarding. It has offered me opportunities for personal and professional growth. I’m excited and look forward to leveraging my experience in the sales frontline, to add a unique perspective to advanced analytics, driving impactful insights and solutions that align with business objectives and customer needs.
