Do you leave your sales results to chance? Well you might be if you are like most businesses that are too fixated on Sales Results – the Outcomes. Managing by numbers, sales managers can get blinded by measuring the number of sales made and revenue and profit margins achieved rather than focusing on the vital activities that produce these outcomes in the first place- The Sales Inputs.
Every outcome is the result of its inputs. Every effect has its corresponding cause(s).
Consider the following questions:
- Do you know how your sales people actually achieved their sales results?
- Do you know how well they are identifying real opportunities with their prospective clients and current accounts?
- Do you know how well they are planning and managing their sales portfolio and their time?
- Do you know how well they are utilizing the CRM to help drive sales and manage relationships?
- Could there be more opportunity in these accounts that is otherwise being identified by your sales people?
- How easy is it for a new comer to learn and replicate what your top sales performers do?
These are just some of the questions that if examined for their content, would make the lives of sales managers and sales people that much better. Sales people would know the vital activities they need to perform and to what standard and what knowledge they need to apply to add real value. And sales managers would yield much better sales results all round if they devoted more of their time coaching and managing their sales people around these input activities rather than only looking for and reporting on their sales results.
Do you want to increase your sales team’s effectiveness and boost sales results?
Pay attention to the details because excellence is in the details. Look at what you put in to see what you get out in terms of sales results.
Sales managers, sales people and business leaders could learn a lot from observing the Quality and Quantity of their actions each day. We call these the Input Measures which are made up of Type & Quantity of Activity and Quality of Activity. These are the areas that people can be trained and coached in.
Type & Quantity of Activities – the following are examples of types of activities:
- Leads developed
- Prospecting calls
- Client meetings
- Proposals developed
- Deals in the pipeline
- Up / Cross sales discussions
- Customer inquiries
- Account management calls / meetings
- Account reviews had
- Referrals requested
Quality of Activities – the following are examples of competencies or standards of activities:
- Business acumen
- Sales Planning skills
- Prospecting skills
- Selling skills
- Communication skills
- Relationship building skills
- Negotiation Skills
- Product knowledge
- Company and market knowledge
- Problem solving
- Client proposal development
- Self-Management
Sales Managers can really make a significant difference to their sales results and the lives of their sales people if they invest the time in coaching, training and working with their people on the Input Measures rather than pointing out the results week in week out. Results are important and need to be acknowledged but they can only be as good as the inputs. Once we understand the Input Measures then we can see their effect on the Results or Output Measures.
Output Measures / Results can include:
- Overall Sales made including sales with new clients and existing clients
- Sales revenue
- Sales profitability
- Sales growth
- Sales quotas
- Sales by product or region
- Average deal size
- Market share & growth
Let’s make sure that sales results are not left to chance; work on the inputs and get them right. It will make a difference to your results.
Remember everybody lives by selling something.
Author: Sue Barrett, MD of www.barrett.com.au
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