Successful business leaders all have in common the knowledge that to truly understand how to grow their businesses, they need to take cues from their customers, rather than relying solely on internal business development. As a window into what their customers want and how they are best accessed and converted, thoughtful organization and analysis of data is unrivaled. But project management, sales tracking, and regular statistical sales reporting requires a commitment of capital and a commitment to use data to grow the business so that the expense is justified.
Businesses that pursue outsourced sales relationships will benefit from the inclusion of regular sales reports that track, statistically, the performance of various campaigns and tactics, from which sales managers and business development executives can make decisions about how to improve sales. Statistical analysis provides the perfect platform from which to launch incentive programs that will motivate salespeople – for instance, running contests for highest conversion rate, highest sales, quickest conversion, etc, that improve the quality of the overall sales force. Data can also offer insight into who is under-performing and even offer insights into why that may be – too little contact with the client? too much?
Statistical sales data provides an objective picture of the success of a sales program and can be obtained on an outsourced basis for in-house sales programs. And as a measure of outsourced sales success, regular reporting should always be included by an outsourced sales company in their package of services, so that client businesses can see just what they are getting for the money they pay. (And any sales outsourcing companies that do not or refuse to offer this should be avoided entirely and are not to be trusted.)
Without a methodology for organizing and interpreting sales data, it is extremely difficult for companies to realize their full sales potential because they are missing out on the story told by their customers through historical sales data. Which salespeople should be earning what? What types of clients are the most responsive to which individuals and which approaches? Do longer courtships of clients lead to higher or lower rates of conversion? These are all questions that can answered by sales statistics – and those answers are crucial to developing a successful sales program, whether it is in-house or outsourced.
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