It’s essential information. You need it to make good decisions about staff, product, marketing and pricing. You are not maximizing your company’s opportunities without it. It’s that old rule; you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
Given the competitive environment and limited resources in today’s operating conditions, it is more important than ever to do more things right. You need to exploit every sales opportunity and maximize every hour of staff time.
Most managers agree with the benefits of monitoring sales activity, but few can afford the time and resources to do it effectively. Too many other things seem to get in the way. Many companies will manage a gross sales number but have limited insight about specific sales activity.
Your company should know whether the sales staff is selling accounts the things that are good for them, be that frequency, size or the right set of zones. It’s important to know how account spending compares to prior years and to see trends and issues while they’re beginning and easier to address.
An audit of activity will create a profile of activity for each member of the staff in areas such as active versus assigned accounts, account spending levels, average ad value, etc. With the right information it is possible to establish productivity standards and create expectations for sales reps. Importantly, it will allow managers and sales reps to quantify activity so they can be more effective.
Depending on the company size and the availability of information a comprehensive audit can be accomplished in a day or two. Information can generally be extracted from systems that don’t have formal reporting programs.
Many companies elect to extend the project to include a review of department sales and production practices, plus a territory analysis and discussion with each sales rep.
With the interviews I am in a position to create a formal report on the entire sales effort and make specific recommendations about a larger variety of topics such as territory deployment, revenue growth opportunities, support and promotional materials or staff development.
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