sales metrics

  • Fewer Sample Requests and Sales Proposals – What’s Wrong?

    • April 10, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Now, instead of sample requests, they’re getting commitments to do business and when they are ready, the sample requests lead to sales.  My client agreed.

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  • Tighter Sales Metrics at New Year Leads to Improved Success

    • January 7, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    That leads to your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) or metrics which drive revenue.  If you collect these now via a daily huddle, that’s terrific; let’s tighten them up.  If you don’t currently have your sales team calling in every morning for 10 minutes, you’re missing out on a critical piece of accountability, team-building and intelligence.

    How can you tighten up your metrics?

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  • Controversial “Best Time” For Salespeople To Fill Their Pipeline

    • June 21, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The obvious answer is to make sure that they fill the pipeline when it begins to empty or is getting close to being empty, right?  

    Wrong.

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  • Does Moneyball Work for the Sales Force?

    • September 26, 2011
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    It’s funny – the way those statisticians arrived at the new baseball statistics are similar to the old sales metrics we used where we calculated the number of attempts, conversations, first meetings, presentations, and proposals required to close 1 deal.  But those metrics are not enough anymore and attempts and conversations are no longer the default method for how sales opportunities come to be.

    What if we included the following new KPI’s as the Sales Force’s version of Moneyball?

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  • Baseball’s General Managers versus Business’ Sales Managers

    • March 30, 2010
    • Posted by: Kurlan & Associates, Inc.
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The 2010 Major League Baseball season officially gets underway this Sunday evening with its greatest rivalry, the Boston Red Sox versus the New York Yankees, at Fenway Park. It gives me a great excuse to write a baseball themed article. But hey, what else would you expect from the author of Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball?

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  • Lance Armstrong’s Metrics Applied to the Sales Force Equals Results

    • December 4, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Recently, I completed Lance Armstrong’s 2001 book on how he became a champion cyclist, was diagnosed with Cancer, beat the cancer, and then returned to become the greatest cyclist in the world.  It was an inspiring, fast-reading book.  While this won’t come as a surprise to my cyclist friends, I was quite surprised to learn how metric-intensive competitive cycling is.

    While training for races, Lance uses a heavy and expensive power meter that measures output (wattage). For the big race, he uses a smaller and lighter top of the line cycling computer to track speed, heart rate, incline, cadence, altitude gain, and power output. He simply adjusts his cycling until the numbers are where they were when he was training at peak performance and he figures the rest will take care of itself. Wow.

    Sales is exactly the same.  You train hard and once the metrics have been established, you simply continue to meet those numbers and the rest will take care of itself.  Simple.

    There are only a few problems with this:

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  • Sales Systems and Processes – 8th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Management Functions

    • December 1, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    the 8th in my series of the Top 10 Sales Management Functions but it is #10 on my list.  Why am I going out of order? 

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  • Do You Need Your Salespeople to Love and Respect You?

    • October 5, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I was coaching a sales manager whose reps were all under performing, even though many of them have a history of achieving and over achieving during less difficult times. Many salespeople with prior success have been struggling to match their past performances. The truth is that most of them just aren’t good enough to overcome the resistance that they face right now. The question is, what percentage of those struggles are due to the ineffectiveness of the salespeople and what portion lies with the ineffectiveness of their sales manager?

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  • Getting Excited About Sales Metrics

    • October 16, 2008
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    As we encourage our clients to do each day, both of my companies have daily huddles for their salespeople.  The purpose of the daily huddle is to keep everyone focused on the measurable activities that drive results.

    During the last couple of weeks, I’ve had our six-year old son in the car for about 6 of these conference calls and it only took one huddle to get him hooked.  He wants to report his numbers – and he has them ready – each time he’s with me.  It makes him proud to participate and he wants to report numbers that are better than theirs.

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