Blog Cover Image 1

3 Strategic Sales Performance Analysis Techniques to Increase Sales

Posted by Carole Mahoney on 3/25/12 12:07 PM

What is the objective of sales performance analysis?  

Do you believe that the objective of data analysis is to find a problem to fix? Is the only way to achieve better results in sales and marketing to focus on where quotas are not being met? 

Do you make your business decisions purely on financial metrics? What growth and increased sales are you missing as a result?

Big data is a big problem for many organizations. It is not a lack of information, it is what to do with it. How do you make all that data actionable?

I am reminded of Mark Roberge's smarketing presentation at the December HUGME. What I am reminded of was his explanation of how he uses big data to coach salespeople to success. 

But can big data help CEOs script the path that leads to the short & long term financial success of their company?

Christopher Frank of American Express recently wrote that the 'biggest gap is the lack of skilled managers to make decisions based on [big data] analysis by a factor of 10x.' I agree with Christopher that the lack of information is not the problem, a lack of strategy on what to do with that data is. There is no doubt that strategy is critical. 

An even greater concern is a question that has been nagging me for years: If big data is the next frontier of innovation, who is leading the way? 

3 Strategic Tactics for CEOs to Increase and Predict Sales Performance 

  1. Get your bearings. Assess your sales, customer service, support team's and manager's core competencies, strengths, weaknesses and challenges. Set the long term and personally motivating goals. Tie their goals to the business goals. 
  2. Create the framework. Use customer persona profiles to define the ideal match, their customer experience and buying process. Integrate your sales and marketing processes. Use a metric-based feedback loop at every step of the buying process to optimize and test your customer hypothesis. Align your process to your target customer's buying process. Script the short term critical behavioral steps and metrics that will reach the long term goals of customer value and satisfaction.
  3. Scale the bright spots. Focus on what is working, learn what process generated the result and duplicate it. Customer value is created through your business processes. 
What opportunities is your business missing because you don't pass the test of a customer focused learning organization that measures ROI by customer value, not just traditional financial metrics? (no, financial metrics and analysis are not enough to make growth-changing business decisions.)
 
How are you relevant to your 21st century buyer? 
 
Will you focus on problems and suffer analysis paralysis, or will you find the bright spots of growth?

Topics: smarketing, sales assessments, sales development, customer profiles, sales performance