Sales & Sales Management Brew

A lot has been stated, taught and coached by our team here at Anthony Cole Training Group, as well as by others in our profession. Occasionally, we have moments of brilliance and other times we can't see the forest from the trees.

This is one of those moments.

For years I have preached that you must look at every step in the sales process, starting with the suspect database, to when the check clears, and the single most metric that I've looked at and encouraged others to look at is ‘dials'. You know, the number of times a sales person actually picks up the phone to ‘try' and talk to someone about their business and the possibility of scheduling an appointment? Dials equal effort. Without effort, results normally won't show up, unless the sales person is lucky.

Upon reflection, the item we should really be looking at is the conversion rate of prospecting effort to opportunities. We can't just look at prospecting effort in a vacuum. First of all, the effort recorded in your CRM application might be a work of fiction to begin with. Second, we don't get paid in sales for effort. Yes, effort is required first, but we have to have opportunities to convert to sales, not just names of introductions or names of people that we've met at a conference or luncheon.

So as you analyze your business or the business of your sales people remember the following:

- Effort is important to record but only as it relates to opportunities.
- Effort is important to record but only as it relates to coaching and motivating to goals.
- Sales people should be paid 0% commission on effort.
- Tracking effort to opportunity conversion will help you more appropriately assess the type of effort being put forth and the skills required to improve them.

In the end, even with the number of opportunities increasing, you still have to get them sold, so make sure that you are tracking the conversion ratio as well.

A moment of brilliance? No, not really. A moment that will help you improve sales results? As Rocky Balboa would say, "Absolutely".