Measuring the performance in selling activities is essential for gaining insights , so that one can make improvisations and tweaks.
For better understanding of the blog, it is suggested to read the following blogs first.
- List of Ten Steps for Selling Your Ideas
-8 Tips to Improve Your Overall Personal Effectiveness for Excelling in Selling
Performance may be defined as the accomplishment of a particular task against pre-decided standards. Performance targets are usually decided in any organization for individuals, teams and leaders.This blog may help you in measuring the performance of selling activities in your organization.
William Edwards Deming, the famous management consultant from USA has said the following:
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you are doing.
It is not enough to do your best, you must know what to do , and then do your best.
Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers who boast about your product or service, and that brings friends with them.
The above statements clearly enunciate that unless work is made into a process, it may not be done properly. With reference to selling activities, this means that optimisation of work is a must, along with redressing the concerns of customer to keep them happy and satisfied.
Further, remember that what gets measured, gets done; what gets measured and analysed well, gets done well.
If you don't know what you have to achieve when and how, you are directionless. All this means is that before doing your work, it must be made into a well-laid out process, with distinct targets in mind - and what, when and how of the selling activities should be clear. The customers and their expectation should also be kept in close view. SMART goals, objectives and the activities pertaining to sales, must be pre-decided. Let us focus on measuring goals, objectives and activities pertaining to sales.
To measure performance in sales goals
Sales goals may be divided into financial goals, client retention or attrition (client goals) and share of target market (market goals).
Annual sales turnover and percentage growth in it, may be measured against predefined targets, with respect to financial goals. Similarly, the client satisfaction level may be determined / measured through continuous feedback. Percentage net promoter's score , may also be calculated.
In market goals, it should always be attempted to calculate the percentage market share of your product/service. Calculation of market ranking is also a good criterion before you.k
To measure sales objectives
Sales objectives may pertain to focus on product, client and market.
If you have more than one product, you must ensure the right products to go to the right clients. An analysis may be made by measuring the annual sales turnover for different products. This will help you to weed out the less-profitable products and promote the profit-oriented products.
With reference to measuring sales objectives pertaining to clients, how many new clients were acquired, may be one criterion. The number of new client leads or referrals may be the other. This all will help in ensuring the right clients are acquired, nurtured , retained and grown.
Sales objectives with referrals to focus on market, may be measured by percentage share of increase, with respect to competitors.
To measure sales activities
Sales activities may be measured with respect to call plan management, cross sales and up-sales management.
The basic purpose of call plan management is to improve the quality of effectiveness of client interactions. This may be measured by the following:
- Call to contact ratio in percentage
- Contact to appointment ratio in percentage
- Appointment to close ratio in percentage
It must be noted that here the walk-ins are not included in the above.
The basic purpose of cross -sales management is to initiate and create multiple sales opportunities and may be measured by
- Percentage cross-sell ratio
- Products sold per client
The basic purpose of up-sell management is to maximize long term value of selected clients and may be measured by the following
- Total sales turnover per client
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