INNERGISE!

Each month Innergy research an area of business that is pertinent to our customer database, carrying out a brief survey and providing some practical ideas that can be immediately implemented to help individuals, teams and organisations overcome some of the key challenges they face and exploit any opportunities available to them.

In March’s review we asked those polled how efficient their current sales activities are, and whether they were getting a good return for their investment in sales time?

The results produced two key areas of real concern in that there were a large percentage of our respondents who deemed their sales activities as being efficient, and yet their conversion ratios were poor, and another group (approximately 25% of our respondents) who simply did not know.

Let’s start with the second issue first, not knowing how effective your sales activity is.

One of the biggest sales myths in business today is the concept that if we work longer hours, do more of the what we are doing, then we will get better results and greater productivity and ultimately revenue. Of course, if what we are doing is good, then stands to reason.

However, if we are going to increase the volume of activity our sales people do, then we need to at least know which activity is the most effective in driving revenue in the first place.

Sales is a science, and there are very clear sets of calculations that will determine an individual’s sales success as they take clients from “they don’t know us” to “they are now a type A client giving us repeat and exclusive business”.  Sales data is available in every business if you know how to find it and even more importantly, how to farm that data.

Where it goes wrong is where that data remains in the hands of people in a business that are remote from the day to day sales activity.

The people who are making the calls, doing the client visits, researching new prospects need to have access to live and clearly defined data at all times, so they can continuously improve, tweak and evolve their sales activity – without it, they are reliant on what they have always done without any defined strategy behind what they are doing.

The second concern, poor conversion ratios even though they deem their activities to be efficient, clearly demonstrates that their activities just aren’t working, or aren’t the right activities in the first place.

I still find it amazing that in some organisations, sales professionals still don’t understand the link between revenue and activity and how tightening up conversion ratios are the simplest and quickest way to increase profitability and generate more sales.

For example, we completed an analysis of a recruitment organisation's sales activity figures recently and identified that by improving the conversion ratio at the third stage of their eight stage sales process by just 10%, their bottom line revenue would increase by approximately £140k!

When we started looking into how they find that 10% improvement at that third stage, it clearly became apparent that a couple of simple improvements in how they were working would see an immediate uplift, without having to do any additional sales activity at all.

Try this simple exercise to start evaluating how efficient you are being now:

First, map out (headlines) each of the various steps you currently take (or should take!) as a business to get a prospect client whom you don’t work with to someone who is spending money with you exclusively and continuously.

Then ascertain what good looks like at each of these steps – in other words, what are the minimum standards you would expect to realise if that step was working as efficiently as it should do.

Thirdly, identify how you can tangibly measure each step (easily and continuously).

Start doing your sales activity and then each week, get together as a team and review conversion ratios so you get both historical data to identify what those minimum standards are for your business, as well as to identify ways to improve each conversion ratio (and perhaps even set incentives around those improvements).

This will certainly help you better forecast what return your sales pipelines will produce as well as creating far greater sales efficiency.

STOP PRESS: If you want to improve your conversion ratios, join us at one of our next Sales Excellence Masterclasses.