subject: Tips For Using Data To Manage Your Sales [print this page] All sales managers need figuresAll sales managers need figures. The most successful managers of field sales organisations are directed more or less by hard prescribed numbers. These are the managers who attend management courses. The less successful organisations either work with the wrong figures or alternatively with too many figures.
In view of the confusing amount of data with which most managers work, it is no wonder that so many problems arise in so many places or work.
Efficiently implement figures within your work place using the following measures.
Do not work with too much data
No employee should have to pursue 10, or at most 15, figures. Even the chiefs of big businesses manage with 15 to 20 values in guiding their huge ship; department heads ought to work with 10 figures. Anyone working with more data could run up against two serious errors:
- wasting time unnecessarily - in certain circumstances concentrating on the wrong data
Do not orientate yourself by data set out for the short term
In their figures system, most businesses concentrate on data from their book keeping and cost control systems. Logically speaking, these are target figures for short-term success like turnover, contribution to costs and temporary results. Figures like the number of customer visits per day, the numbers of closures per day or the lost order rate also belong in this category.
Be sure to expand your figure system to data from the areas of:
- customer satisfaction - employee satisfaction - product and service quality
If your business is to survive over the long term.
Pay attention to precision
Information, which is too heavily guarded, is just as worthless as too much. Here is an example of this: in your organisation, telephone costs have risen by 50%. You ask for an explanation if you address this problem in the context of a meeting. All that you hear are mutual accusations. However a breakdown of telephone costs by telephone is not possible. Thus those who are driving the costs up remain undiscovered.
Be careful of figures, which lead, in the wrong direction
Not all the tasks of field sales can be summed up in figures. It is not objectively measurable, whether, a salesperson delivers good market research data. In many businesses in cases like this an attempt is made to get rid of the unmeasurable quality using supporting figures like, for example, the extensiveness of reports. It is true to say here that no figure is often better than a nonsensical figure.
Do not lump everything together
Every figure which lumps all the employees, all areas and all customer branches together is senseless and unusable as taught on a good management course. It promotes quantity but by no means quality. How many customers a field salesperson manager's daily can rarely be laid down as the same for everyone.
Do not calculate using touched up figures
In most companies there are figures in the first and second divisions. Turnover, for example, profits, sales figures, contribution to costs, are among the most important figures. In a chain of fast food restaurants, as an example, which has specialised in fried food, it is food efficiency. All the business managers and employees know that this is the most important figure and draw up a diagram every month. Food efficiency provides the relationship between the food which is sold and those which are thrown away (due to remaining under the grill for too long a waiting time). Therefore good food efficiency can be achieved, either through sensible management or by frying of food according to demand. The latter solution certainly leads to long waiting times and thereby irritates customers but also to a high food efficiency. In sales the Lost Order Rate can, for example, be massaged just like this food efficiency could be abused - someone who just visits specific customers will not make considerable new business but will have an extremely low Lost Order Rate.
Measure the correct facts
Certainly, friendliness is an important characteristic for a sales person. Therefore it is also correct to evaluate it in researching customer satisfaction. But - a field salesperson who repeatedly gives out the wrong price, gets on the customers' nerves and that is so whether they smile in a friendly way while they are doing it or not. Anyone only measuring their employees' politeness is, in the end, concentrating on a secondary virtue.
Do not just work with figures which torpedo team work
You constantly hear and read that "selling is team work". However if all the figures in sales are only drawn up according to employees, this will torpedo willingness to work as a team. How can a salesperson seriously back up a colleague whose (better) performance is going to be used to reproach them in their next assignment? Reorganising his or her figure system according to team results, is a must for anyone who seriously wants teamwork.
Using data to manage a field sales operation is an important ingredient to success and is therefore an important skill of a successful manager. You can further develop your skills by attending a good management course.
