Selling and Sales Management - Chapter 4: Strategic sales management and analytics

Activity

Filling time with tasks

e.g. Just talking to people

Productivity

Doing important tasks with time

e.g. Making a plan to get people closer to purchasing

Customer pipeline

A way of breaking down the consumer journey from the salesperson’s perspective

Managing the consumer pipeline

Figuring out the next step that’ll move the consumer toward a sale

Prospecting stage

Things done to find potential customers, as well as lead qualification and initial conversations

e.g. Cold outreach, inbound/outbound sales

Customer discovery stage

Understanding customer needs and possible solutions

Needs assessment

Identifying a consumer’s needs and wants

BANT

• B - Budget

• A - Authority (the decision maker)

• N - Needs

• T - Time

How much talking should be done?

Customer should do 60% - 70%

Salespeople should do 30% - 40%

What questions should the seller ask?

Effective discovery questions to find out the consumer’s problems

Demonstration stage

Overview of the offering that conveys how it can solve the customer’s problem

e.g. A live demo of computer software and how it works

Demonstration stage (con’t)

If an offering can’t be demoed easily, then other ways must be found to demonstrate how it can solve the problem

Proposal

An overview of the offering’s features that also contains an explanation of how it can solve the consumer’s issue, pricing, and post-purchase offerings

Proposal (con’t)

The client gets a document which can be shared with others

Closing

The customer agrees to buy the product and signs a contract; the salesperson stays in close contact with the customer and works with the legal team and sales operations to make sure they won’t change their mind

When does most of the negotiation happen?

During the proposal and closing stages

Potential consumer pool

The group of potential consumers working towards a purchase

Dividing the potential consumer pool

Allows for assessment of the pool’s health when the pool is divided

Dividing the potential consumer pool example

You have 50 consumers, and after dividing them into different stages of the pipeline, there are 40 in the prospecting stage and 10 in the discovery stage

Based on the findings, you’ll need to advance the consumers to the later stages by taking the appropriate steps

Consumer pipeline conversion funnel

Measures conversion rates during the sales process

Sales pipeline

Reflects what a seller does during the sales process

How to manage a salespipeline

• Follow up with leads

• Get rid of dead leads

• Monitor metrics

• Give the pipeline more content

Selling analytics

Metrics and other data used to measure a salesperson’s performance and optimize selling opportunities

Customer relationship management (CRM)

Focuses on customer and deal management and enhanced lead tracking, and makes it easier for salespeople to move opportunities along the stages

How do CRMs help with organization

• Preventing critical tasks from being overlooked

• Ensuring leads are contacted effectively

• Keeping track of leads and their contact info

Scorecard

A spreadsheet in which KPIs are emailed out to sales teams

At what point do metrics become valuable?

They become valuable when sellers have something to compare them to

e.g. Dashboards show how one’s metrics compare to company averages or their goals/quotas

Time trend analytics

Patterns of data that aim to understand trends over time

Year-over-year analytics (YoY)

Compares one period of time in the current year to the same time period from the previous year; is very popular in industries where sales fluctuate seasonaly

Month-over-month (Mom)

Compares the current month to the previous month

Customer analytics

A measurement of the value and condition of a salesperson’s customers; can be measured individually or in a group

Customer analytics examples

Total revenue per customer, average order size, customer revenue growth, and acquisition cost

Market analytics

The market’s current value and future opportunities

What can a “market” be to a salesperson?

Geographic-level (location) or product-level (different product categories)

Market share

A market’s total value captured by the specific company

e.g. John Deere’s farming equipment sales is worth $15 million, and you’ve sold $5 million worth of equipment, then the market share is 33% (5 divided by 15)

Market growth

The rate at which a market is growing; is the market is growing fast, then consider increasing market share in that area

Market growth (con’t)

Is measured by year-by-year or month-by-month analytics

e.g. If the market is $15 this year and $13 last year, then the growth would be 15.38% ([15-13]/13)

Investing

Supplying more time, resources, and budget to increase sales in the market

Formula for calculating sales quota process

total revenue earned/sales revenue quota

Formula for calculating renewal rate

Total customers renewed/total customers up for renewal

Formula for calculating average order size

total revenue/total unique orders

Formula for calculating customer revenue growth

Revenue from this month - last month from customer divided by revenue last month from customer

Formula for calculating acquisition cost

Sum of all expenses used to aquire the customer