If you are like most executives, you start the new year asking for everyone’s goals, plans and forecasts. Terrific start. But then what?
You’ll need to modify each pipeline stage’s requirements for each salesperson. If the goals change, the requirements in each stage must change with them. And if their critical ratios for closing have changed in the past 12 months, those also must be factored into your new pipeline requirements.
That leads to your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) or metrics which drive revenue. If you collect these now via a daily huddle that’s terrific; let’s tighten them up. If you don’t currently have your sales team calling in every morning for 10 minutes, you’re missing out on a critical piece of accountability, team-building and intelligence.
How can you tighten up your metrics?
Suppose for example that you currently have your salespeople reporting the numbers of new conversations, new scheduled meetings and qualified opportunities. You can tighten them up by inserting “targeted”. In other words, your salespeople can call on a wide range of potential customers, but a much smaller group is in the sweet spot. It’s the sweet spot which will lead them to their goals for revenue and profitability, but any customer will count as a new sale. Suppose you have them report only those conversations with sweet spot or targeted opportunities, new meetings scheduled with targeted opportunities and qualified targeted opportunities. There will be more pipeline movement, improved closing ratios and your revenue and profit goals will be achieved earlier in the year.
A benefit to this change is that those salespeople who struggle with the sweet spot, but who have hidden behind their numbers, will be exposed. Your job is to determine why they struggle with the target opportunities. The best way to quickly identify, understand and solve these and other similar struggles is with a sales force evaluation.
Tighter is sweeter.
