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Assessing Productivity
| Guest post by: Tom Abbott |
Article Overview: Assessing productivity and profitability of each sales team member.
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Free Download - Having Conversations with Prospects By Tom Abbott |
Assessing Productivity
The
purpose of measuring performance is to have clarity on the
profitability of the sales volume brought in by each sales team
member. With that seemingly attainable outcome in mind, why do
companies struggle with assessing sales force productivity? They
sometimes find measuring sales performance challenging because they
have failed to incorporate quantitative and qualitative criteria.
Quantitative criteria includes: sales volume in dollars or units,
growth over previous years, new accounts, and profitability.
Qualitative criteria includes: attitude, product knowledge,
communication skills, personal appearance, customer feedback, selling
skills, and personal initiative. Ultimately, your sales team must be
assessed according to clearly defined (and clearly understood)
objectives. As a great sales leader, it is your responsibility to
communicate your objectives as far as sales volume, sales revenue,
profitability, return-on-investment, market penetration, and market
share. Be specific. Set deadlines.
One
simple way of measuring lead generation and conversion activities is
to use a spreadsheet. In the first column, titled "Activities",
list each of the following on subsequent rows: prospecting calls
(#)/hours spent (#); prospecting calls (#)/appointments made (#);
appointments made (#)/sales (#); hours worked (#)/money earned ($);
and prospecting calls last month (#)/income this month ($). Each of
the adjacent columns should be titled, "Week 1", "Week
2", "Week 3", and "Week 4" respectively.
Encourage your sales team to use this tool on a weekly basis to
measure their activities. Coach your sales team by rewarding them for
achieving the objectives and helping them come up with solutions to
improve the results from their activities.
Qualitative
criteria can be measured by listening to your customers. Who knows
more about your sales team's attitude, product knowledge,
communication skills, and personal appearance, than your customers?
Asking your customers specific questions and encouraging general
comments can be useful. There are several ways of getting customer
feedback including: comment cards, focus groups, surveys by mail,
telephone and email. You could also engage your customers through
social media networking to help you better reach the unreachable
customer. When assessing the productivity and profitability of your
sales team, be sure to differentiate between aptitude and attitude.
When in doubt, train a poor aptitude and fire a bad attitude.
Remember
that incorporating quantitative and qualitative criteria could help
you better assess productivity and profitability.
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Article Tags: productivity, profitability, sales, team member, training
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About the Author: Tom Abbott RSS for Tom's articles - Visit Tom's website He is a member of the Association of Professional Speakers Singapore, Canadian Professional Sales Association and Marketing Institute of Singapore. Tom is also President of the Redezvous Chapter of Business Network International and serves on the Executive Committee of the International Coach Federation Singapore. Tom has spoken at Asia Professional Speakers Singapore, Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, International Coach Federation (Singapore), Marketing Institute of Singapore, Singapore Malay Chamber of Commerce & Industry and Singapore Press Holdings. Tom has appeared in Berita Harian newspaper, Human Resources magazine, Make It Business magazine, Singapore Women’s Weekly magazine and is a regular contributor of sales articles published in The Singapore Straits Times newspaper and The Singapore Marketer magazine. He has been a guest on radio shows 938 Live “Need to Know” segment and Business Insanity Talk Radio. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube Click here to visit Tom's website   Detecting Your Niche Assessing Productivity Having Conversations with Prospects |
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Re: Time-Management Success Story!
- @Michelle
@Trent
I know what you mean! On Monday I had four key objectives to achieve. I didn't write them down - they were so strongly impressed in my noddle that I didn't need to! Perhaps keeping things simple and urgent is the key...
Yesterday was a reasonably successful day, but not half as productive as Monday. Productivity always takes a dive when I have two classes to teach in two different parts of town at two different times of day (lunch time/evening)!
Re: The 3 Factors That are Limiting Your Productivity
- Hi Evan,
Thanks for a great article and video on 'The 3 Factors That are Limiting Your Productivity'. I think that no matter whether you are self employed like myself or a CEO with staff, it is so important to manage your time so as to maximize the benefit to your business.
Your expression Eliminate; Automate; Delegate is easy to remember and will certainly stick in my mind. There are many good business ideas out there but they will ultimately run into difficulty without proper planning and execution so these tips will certainly help.
I have also left this comment on the article and will place a link to it on my blog.
regards,
Mal.
New Kid in Town
- Hi everyone, I am Mike Martel, a former Special Forces Green Beret who moved in the corporate world a few years back. I found that my training and experiences were very applicable in helping people get results. I wrote a book - "Get ER Done: The Green Beret Guide to Productivity." With my coaching, I work with people to achieve massive results for themselves and their businesses.
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- CFS can assist social landlords in coming up with practical solutions to combat financial exclusion among their tenants and the local communities where they operate. In the past 10 years, we have worked with a wide range of social landlords, including Trafford Housing Trust, Golden Gates Housing and Southern Housing Group.
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