Getting Behind Sales Results – How Data Interrogation Can Lead To Insight

Did you see the Wimbledon mens final on Sunday? Raffa Nadal won in straight sets - 6-3, 7-5, 6-4. Imagine not seeing the game and just having the result, how insightful could you be about how he won?

For many sales managers, that is exactly the position they are in. They have the sales results or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), but don’t have any meaningful or accurate Critical Success Factor (CSF) data. Consequently their capacity to interpret the results is very limited.

Have a look at Nadal’s data sheet below:

Once you know he won the match, notice how uninteresting the KPI data becomes and how your interest is drawn to the CSF data. The next striking thing is how close the Service battle was, on many of the factors Nadal did worse than Berdych. Several of these CSFs don’t seem that critical when they are delivered to a minimum quality level.

Have a look at the last CSF, if you want to understand in an instant how Berdych lost, there it is. He didn’t win a single break point whilst Nadal won 67% of his opportunities.

Apart from that huge differential another, almost contradictory theme is how Nadal won through being consistently better around other variables. The number of winners hit - 2 more, first serves in - 10% better, first serves won - 1% better, second serves won - 6% better, unforced errors - 4 fewer, but it’s the compound effect of these small differentials that creates this winning performance.

Finally look at his aggression. Nadal came to the net almost 20% more frequently than Berdych, putting additional pressure on his opponent, taking the game to him, being more pro-active.

Imagine having an accurate data set like this, correlating all the CSFs of your sales process to the KPIs achieved, split by individual. It would give you a laser like focus on where both the quality and quantity of activity needs to improve. It would also show you where potential best practice exists for you to model and disseminate across the whole team.

Speed To Competence

If you are recruiting you will need to think about inducting/onboarding your highly motivated, keen to learn, potential sales stars of the future. However, within three months your new recruits will have become institutionalised, demonstrating the standard distribution of performance - 20% doing really well, 20% doing really badly and 60% contributing to the existing average by being, well, average. What happened?

Odds are the induction didn’t align with the ‘advertised’ interview rhetoric or the reality people found when they joined their new front line colleagues. Typical induction processes do not engender fast delivery of the required performance - what we call 'Speed To Competence'. New sales people joining an organisation actually want the same thing as their leaders – to become as successful as possible as quickly as possible, and to be effective and happy in their work. The right induction process harnesses the new recruits’ high levels of motivation, their willingness to learn and their desire to impress, and then channels it through a high impact, experiential learning environment. This creates not only improved profitability in the short term, but also accelerates employee engagement and motivation over the longer term.

Key Questions:

1. How quickly do you expect new recruits to recoup their full recruitment and ongoing employment costs?
2. How quickly do you expect them to reach the average performance standards?
3. How long does it take them to be in the top 20% - doing really well?
4. How quickly do you expect new recruits to set new sales performance/productivity standards?

What Does Structured Training’s Speed To Competence Deliver?

• Integrate your organisation’s purpose and culture into the required working practices, creating a real seam of consistency from the board-room to the frontline.
• Embed sales best practice from day one. The right things being done in the right way.
• Establish a high ownership, high accountability norm. Salespeople doing what it takes, not just doing what they’re told.
• Create a value-adding, pro-active, high-performing work tempo
• Give people the confidence to challenge the status quo but always from the credible position of being a significant contributor
• Increase engagement and motivation through clear expectations and commitment to common objectives
• Equip sales managers and sales directors to be effective role-models and coaches, creating a sales culture as obsessed about Critical Success Factors (inputs) as Key Performance Indicators (outputs)

To find out how you can supercharge your induction process, please contact us.