In order for sales managers to get a good handle on the situation, they need to have the tools set in place to track and measure performance on an on-going basis.
When sales managers, and their directors, are able to monitor performance, it puts them in a strong position to make adjustments necessary to encourage best practice and achievement throughout the team, while eliminating weaknesses.
The trouble is, too many businesses do not have a specific means of measuring sales performance. Recent research from data marketing firm JNR shows that 60 per cent of companies do not have the infrastructure in place to measure sales success or failure.
It shouldnt take a detective to unravel who is driving your sales teams success and who is holding it back. With the right tools and processes in place, however, sales leaders can quickly clue into what is going on with their teams.
First, it is necessary to understand how the sales team is performing on the whole. This can be achieved by setting up a standard set of metrics that encompass key sales team targets. Relevant performance indicators to monitor include:
- Number of leads received
- Number of leads converted into opportunities
- Number of leads that progress through each stage of the sales cycle
- Average length of the sales cycle
- Number of sales won
- Revenue breakdowns and averages
It is critical that these metrics should be monitored on an individual basis as well. It is particularly important when assessing individual performance to track follow-up time, opportunity conversion rate and the overall time it takes to progress a lead.
Only once you have these metrics to hand are you in a position to achieve true visibility about who the star performers are and who needs more guidance and coaching. The inclination of most sales managers may be to follow their instincts as to whom their strongest people are, but the reality is, they need to look at hard statistics on performance before making significant decisions.
Usually when sales reps are confronted with poor performance, they claim the situation was beyond their control and due to circumstances.
More often than not, this is not the case. Having a standardised monitoring process in place ensures that the reasons for strong and weak sales performance are quantifiable, clear to see and indisputable.
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The monitoring process should take in everything from lead management, to discovery, to the pitch, to demonstration, to financial commitment, to the close. The sales manager can then use the resulting information to determine which salespeople need more support to succeed and which might have demonstrated best practice that can be emulated across the team.
Adopting a strong sales process is a step in the right direction but to gain the strongest insight into team and individual performance, it is necessary to use the right supporting technology.
It is critical, therefore, to have a platform that enables you to capture and analyse all your hard sales data: in other words, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution.
CRM provides a way of easily accessing all the metrics on both team and individual performance and displaying the results across one dashboard, the sales manager can easily track what is going on and take appropriate action as necessary.
However, CRM doesnt just benefit the sales manager; it helps the individual sales reps themselves, providing a clear unbiased record of their performance that can guide them towards improvements. The metrics can provide invaluable indicators as to where they need to shore-up their approach, arming them to hit their targets. Plus it can motivate those failing to hit their marks.
Using CRM, sales reps can also take advantage of automation, tap into customer intelligence, formulate action plans and keep up-to-date on each contacts situation and do this either in the office or on the road via a mobile device.
For a sales department to successfully drive profitability, you need to be able to understand what is really going on with the team and the factors that are affecting performance.
The result is the directors and managers responsible for the teams, and the companys success, know exactly where things are going right, where they are going wrong and what to tweak to improve the sales outlook. Indeed, a good process, the correct metrics and an effectively configured CRM solution takes all the mystery out of sales management.
Diego Lunardi is head of direct sales EMEA for Maximizer Services?.
