Pictures are worth a thousand words, especially when it comes to measuring sales and marketing production.

Measuring Sales Production Correctly

Figure 1 below contains two process behavior charts showing production measurements from a B2B company’s sales process. The first shows the quantity of qualified opportunities generated per month. The second shows quantity of closed orders per month. Each is for the same group of salespeople over the same twelve month time period.

Most companies measure orders (output) only, so they have no way of knowing what is really going on in the business. In this case we can tell a lot more about what is going on because we have a measure of the input (qualified opportunities) as well as the output.

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May 27th, 2009 Posted to Blog | Comments (6)

There is an interesting saying among psychotherapists that goes:

“Don’t try to solve anyone’s problems until you find out why they like having them.”

Think about that. Therapists know they can’t solve any patient’s problem until they understand the story hidden behind the problem.

Now, please don’t think I’m saying sales organizations need therapy, or that sales executives like having problems!

What I want you to get is the idea that when someone is not doing what you want them to, there is a problem behind the problem. If the sales training doesn’t stick, if salespeople are not following the process, that is not the real problem.

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Last week, on the customer collective website, Dave Brock and Christian Maurer drilled into an interesting issue: Why don’t companies get the results they expect from sales training? (Sales Managers, Use it or Lose It, by Dave Brock)

The 5 Whys Applied to Sales Training

Dave pointed out that when sales managers didn’t coach salespeople in the use of the tools and templates that came with the training, there was no way the training could have an effect. Christian Maurer picked up the trail by starting to ask “The 5 Whys,” a powerful technique developed by Sakichi Toyoda (an inventor, and founder of Toyoda Industries), for uncovering root causes of problems.

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May 11th, 2009 Posted to Blog, Unpublished Blog Posts | Comments (1)

Last week, on the customer collective website, Dave Brock and Christian Maurer drilled into an interesting issue: Why don’t companies get the results they expect from sales training? (Sales Managers, Use it or Lose It, by Dave Brock)

The 5 Whys Applied to Sales Training

Dave pointed out that when sales managers didn’t coach salespeople in the use of the tools and templates that came with the training, there was no way the training could have an effect. Christian Maurer picked up the trail by starting to ask “The 5 Whys,” a powerful technique developed by Sakichi Toyoda (an inventor, and founder of Toyoda Industries), for uncovering root causes of problems.

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May 11th, 2009 Posted to Blog, Unpublished Blog Posts | Comments (1)

Last week’s blog post, “Why Is It So Hard to Create Improvements in the Sales Department?” listed six examples of companies who tried and failed to improve sales results. All shared the same root cause.

Did you identify the common element, the root cause?

The root cause in each case was “Systems Thinking.”

If you know this simple idea already, you’ll find it interesting to see how it applies in each example. If it is new to you, I’ll provide a simple analogy to explain it.

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May 4th, 2009 Posted to Blog | Comments (5)