Typically, when I am talking with company executives and they are frustrated with the company’s revenue, I hear tales of lost orders, poor sales pipelines and shrinking margins. It is always after the fact and by that I mean it’s after the month, quarter or year has ended. That begs the question, are there any indicators during the week, month or quarter that give an indication of what the results may be at the end of the reporting period?
Yes.
What I am about to describe is not very popular within the ranks of the sales team, and if you have a CRM system (that is being fully utilized) you may already have this data. We work with our clients to create a list of daily behaviors that result in future orders. Some examples are number of outbound dials per day, number of conversations with decision-makers per day, the number of face-to-face sales meetings that are booked and (but not least) how many daily face-to-face selling events took place. The salespeople then track daily their results vs. a standard.
Managers then review these sales behavior journals on a weekly basis with the individual salespeople. It becomes quite clear if a salesperson is going to be successful or not. If they are not making any outbound dials, or talking with decision-makers, or booking appointments, or visiting with prospects at the appropriate rate, then orders probably will not be booked at the level you want.
So, do you wait until the end of the month or quarter to determine how well your sales team is doing or do you monitor key sales behaviors during the selling period to see where sales will be (and make adjustments before the end of the reporting period)?
Dave Harman is an associate with Sandler Training. He has over 30 years’ experience in sales and sales management with Fortune 500 companies as well as small, family-owned organizations. He has held positions from sales to senior management with companies such as Conoco/Vista, Amresco and Ohio Awning, and owns his own business. He earned his MBA with a concentration in Marketing from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. You can reach him at [email protected] or (888) 448-2030.
