How-To Guide Part 5 – Measure and Monitor Sales Results
Welcome to our MWBE How To Guide, in which we give you simple and practical steps for reaching your sales targets. This five-part series covers the fundamentals of sales, and in this final part, we discuss measuring and monitoring sales results. Read the previous article, Understand Your Customers and Markets, here.
Understanding your customers and markets, which we covered in the previous post, is job number one. Personal interaction is the chief way to understand your customers’ wants and needs, but measuring and monitoring sales results gives you additional insight into their buying behavior. Customers sometimes say one thing but do another, and when this happens, it’s important for you to find out why. A combination of personal interaction and data monitoring will give you comprehensive information about your customers, how they are interacting with your company, and what their buying behavior says about them.
The following three steps are the basics of using data to understand your customers and improve your sales strategy.
Step 1 – Review Metrics on a Consistent Basis
Keep tabs on your key performance indicators and opportunity pipeline by scheduling weekly review sessions. Track results for product sales, segment sales, channel sales and sales team revenues by salesperson. Look for places where what you are hearing from your customers doesn’t align with metrics. For example, let’s say many of your customers have been asking repeatedly for your red widget to be waterproof. You make your red widget waterproof, but metrics show that sales are still not moving. This disconnect tells you to investigate why customers are not getting the message about that product feature.
Step 2 – Adjust Strategy Based on Performance
Based on your results, adjust your management focus. It may be necessary to rally the troops to increase a particular product’s sales, or to increase output for a market segment or territory. Using the above example, it you may need to ask marketing for help with messaging.
Step 3 – Define Repeatable Best Practices
Document what is working for your top salespeople by modifying scripts, redefining processes, and sharing knowledge among peers.
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