As we’ve continued to meet with sales leaders across the globe about our research on the Challenger Rep, we always get a variety of reactions and responses as they think about how the research relates to their own experiences, teams and organization.  And quite often, a leader will make a statement about how Challenger correlates to their sales metrics – comments such as “You know, our metrics around activities don’t reinforce Challenger behaviors, they are more aligned to Hard Worker behaviors” or “my highest activity reps aren’t my highest performing reps.”

In fact, our 2011 Sales Metrics Benchmark Survey shows that 30% of respondents measure “customer appointments made per rep per month” as a rep performance metric.  But does this metric necessarily align to the Challenger behaviors?

It’s one of many interesting insights and questions our members ask when they see the research on the five sales rep profiles, including: Read More »

(This is a guest post by Yi Kang of the Marketing Leadership Council,our sister program for heads of Marketing.)

The PhDs are hired, the software installed, the data collected, and now the rest of the company waits eagerly for profit to climb – why shouldn’t it, now that we have advanced analytics? The popular book/movie Moneyball shows us that the Oakland A’s hit a homerun using sabermetrics like this, so then why can’t we? After all, if Billy Beane only had one Paul DePodesta, shouldn’t we do even better with an entire geek squad?

We all secretly wish for a magic weapon to vanquish competition. Where better to place our faith than in an analytical model churning out intimidating, neat lines of data? It’s a perfect deus ex machina to get out of a sticky situation.

However, as with anything complex, we forget that it’s one thing to own analytical infrastructure and another entirely to be able to use it well.

Regardless of whether you’re advanced enough to implement agent-based modeling or you’re just taking baby steps beyond bar and pie charts, a few ground rules remain the same when it comes to acting on analytics: Read More »

Let’s face it—it’s hard to get sales metrics right. Not only is it important to measure the right metrics so that you have an accurate picture of how your sales force is performing, but you also need to get your sales people to care enough about metrics to use them. After all, it’s not unusual for reps to look at a dashboard packed with data and say, “OK, what am I supposed to do with this?”  This is why it’s paramount to present metrics to reps in a way that provides both insight and actionable next steps for improving their performance.

On our recent webinar Getting the Most from Your Sales Metrics, one of our panelists, Scott Kolar, VP of Sales Operations for LexisNexis, uses an interesting analogy to get reps to understand how to use metrics: approach metrics just like a professional golfer approaches the game of golf.

Professional golfers (and athletes in general) continuously look for ways to get better at what they do and constantly measure various aspects of their performance to do it. As Scott put it, “Think of a PGA tour player—ultimately they need to shoot a good score and that’s what counts in the end. It’s just like a sales person, ultimately the need to hit their goal.” Read More »

Everyone who’s worked on rolling out a CRM system knows that getting salespeople to fully incorporate CRM into their daily jobs is far from easy. Sales executives have been struggling with this challenge since the advent of CRM thanks to how sales forces initially perceive it:  rather than seeing CRM as a valuable means to enrich customer interactions, they tend to view it as nothing more than an inconvenience in their already busy schedules.

(To help overcome this perception and convince reps to use the tool, check out the resources on our CRM adoption topic center).

Unfortunately for organizations though, achieving rep buy-in and use of the system doesn’t end the adoption battle. In a recent conversation with one member, an executive commented how tracking CRM adoption is a challenge in it of itself because there’s no set of the “right” metrics that any company can use to measure sales force adoption.

He could not have been more correct. Because no two businesses are exactly alike, it’s not possible for organizations to use a “one size fits all” set of metrics to properly measure their CRM adoption rates.

With that in mind, member organizations have shared the following two approaches to selecting metrics that measure CRM adoption:   Read More »

(This is a guest post by Matt Lind of the Customer Contact Council, our sister program for heads of Customer Service and Contact Centers.)

On the SEC research team, we’re no strangers to data—in fact, we’re constantly collecting and analyzing all types of data to inform our research studies and help members benchmark their performance. But with more data available today than ever before, companies are increasingly finding themselves in a somewhat ironic position: they actually have more data than they (or more precisely, their systems) can handle.

“Big data”—or data sets so large that they become difficult to work with using typical database management tools—was the focus of a recent report released by The McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of consulting giant McKinsey & Co.

It’s an interesting phenomenon to ponder: essentially, the amount of data we’re collecting is fast outpacing the technology available to analyze it all. We’re reaching a point where the answers to (most) any question are ‘out there’ in the data—we just need to know how and where to find them.

The McKinsey report highlights the major benefits that businesses stand to gain from big data, but it also cites several issues that will need to be resolved before these gains can be fully realized. At the top of this list are issues concerning data policies, and we believe the focus for SEC members in the coming years will likely be around these data policies and the rules for how companies collect, store, and analyze information relating to their customers.   Read More »

This is the time of year when many are thinking about what goals they’re going to commit to. And part of this process also involves a consideration of the metrics the organization needs to measure and report on. This is always a tricky thing since the number of metrics is endless and you don’t want to settle on a dashboard that simply reports on what has happened and that offers no insight into how things are developing.

The solution is to try and model out the sales process and provide different individuals with numbers that will make it easier for them to deliver against their commitments:

• For reps, the metrics will be tend to be around the pipeline and will want to contain a mechanism for evaluating the quality of the opportunity as well as the usual pipeline metrics that are more focused on volume.

• Similarly, managers will want to have access to aggregate and trend information so that they can help achieve the desired outcomes. We would always recommend that any manager dashboards also include some softer measures, assessing the development needs of individual reps, as well as a measure of the quality of the relationship between the manager and the rep.

That said, I do believe that there are some metrics that absolutely every sales leader should know and track since they provide crucial clues as to what is happening. This is a personal list, and so I’d love for people to chime in and nominate some of their favorite metrics and why they like them.

Read More »

Show of hands… How many of you see your good channel partners (you know, those who achieve certification and continually invest in your partnership) receive the same rewards as your not-so-hot channel partners (those who never complete training and constantly strain your supply chain with inaccurate forecasts)?

As much time and effort as companies spend on selecting the right channel partners, few have managed to establish a performance measurement and incentive process that actually reinforces desired channel partner behaviors.

Why is this?

Well, chances are, what you ideally want out of your channel partners is directly at odds with what your channel partners want from you. So then, how do you actually motivate channel partners to act in accordance with your – the supplier’s – strategy?

Companies often make the mistake of evaluating partners’ performance using primarily volume-based metrics. While simple to track, these metrics do not provide much insight into the quality and profitability of deals closed or partners’ dedication to your company.

Instead, performance measurement programs should incorporate both volume- and behavior-focused metrics so that you can track how partners are producing business, not just how much.

You should aim to have objective, uniform metrics that measure the performance of both yourselves and your channel partners against the strategies and plans you both previously agreed upon. Both suppliers and partners need to clearly understand the other side’s expectations of their performance.   Read More »