Tips for Using Data to Manage Your Sales Team

All sales managers need figures. The most successful managers of field sales organisations are directed more or less by hard prescribed numbers. These are the managers who attend management courses. The less successful organisations either work with the wrong figures or alternatively with too many figures.

It is little wonder that many problems arise in so many places or work. As a result of the confusing amount of data which most managers work with.

You can employ figures efficiently in your work place with the following measures.
 
Do not work with too much data

No employee should have to chase 10, or at most 15, figures. Even the chiefs of large corporations manage with 15 to 20 values in guiding their vast ship; heads of department ought to work with 10 figures. Anyone who works with more data could come up against two serious errors:

-          Unnecessarily wasting time
-          In some instances concentrating on the wrong data

Do not acquaint yourself with data set out for the short term

In their data system, most companies concentrate on figures from their accounting and cost control systems. Logically speaking, these are objective figures for interim success like contribution to costs, turnover and temporary results. Data like the number of client visits per day, the numbers of closures per day or the lost order rate also belong in this class.

Be sure to increase your figure system to data from the areas of:

-          customer satisfaction
-          employee satisfaction
-          product and service quality

If your business is to survive over the long term.

Pay attention to precision

Information, which is too closely guarded, is just as valueless as too much. An example of this is: telephone costs in your office have risen by 50%. You ask for an explanation by addressing this problem in the context of a meeting. All that you hear are reciprocal accusations. However a breakdown of telephone costs by extension is not achievable. As a consequence those who are causing the increase remain undiscovered.

Be careful of figures, which lead, in the wrong direction

Not all the tasks of field sales can be summed up in figures.  Whether, for example, a sales person delivers good market research data is not objectively measurable.  In many businesses in cases like this an attempt is made to get rid of the immeasurable quality using supporting figures like, for example, the extensiveness of reports.  It is true to say here that no figure is often better than a ridiculous figure.

Do not lump everything together

Every figure, which lumps all the employees, all areas and all customer branches together, is senseless and unusable, as taught on a good management course. It promotes quantity but by no means quality.  The quantity of customers a field sales person manages daily can seldom be expected for everyone.

Do not calculate using touched up figures

In most organisations there are figures in the first and second divisions. For instance turnover, contribution to costs, profits and sales figures is among the most important figures. In a sequence of fast food restaurants, for example, which has specialised in fried food, it is food efficiency. All the business managers and employees know that this is the most important figure and draw up a diagram every month.  Food efficiency provides the relationship between the food that is sold and that which is thrown away (due to remaining under the grill for too long a waiting time). As a result good food efficiency can be achieved, either through sensible management or by frying food according to demand. The latter solution undoubtedly leads to longer waiting times and thereby irritates customers but also to high food efficiency. In sales the Lost Order Rate can, for example, be massaged just like this food efficiency could be abused – someone who only visits specific customers will not make significant new business but has an enormously low Lost Order Rate.

Measure the correct facts

Unquestionably, friendliness is an essential characteristic for a sales person.  For that reason it is also correct to evaluate it in researching customer satisfaction. Consequently a field sales person who continuously gives out the wrong price, gets on the clients’ nerves and that is the case whether they smile in a affable way while they are doing it or not.  Any company which only measures the employees' politeness eventually, concentrates on a lesser virtue

Do not just work with figures which torpedo team work

You frequently hear and read “selling is team work”. However if all the figures in sales are only drawn up according to employees, this will undermine any willingness to work as a team. How can a sales person sincerely back up a co-worker whose (better) performance is going to be used to criticise them in their next assignment? Reorganising his or her figure system according to team results is a must for anyone who seriously wants teamwork.

Using data to manage a field sales operation is an important ingredient to success and is therefore an essential skill of a successful manager. You can further enhance your skills by attending a good management course.

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