The numbers game is dead. Long live strategic ratios.

The business climate in 2011 is projected to be brutal with less money, tighter budgets, fewer sales people and scarcer customers. In spite of this many companies will thrive. How? By changing the way they view prospects and the selling process.

Method 1: High Volume Low Results

The traditional approach to sales activity has been volume gets results. In other words, given enough volume, anyone can reach the desired results. The approach to the high volume is often too costly or too many factors skew the results. Take for example, simply adding more telemarketers to make more calls. If they are poor quality personnel with low skill levels, two things occur: The number of calls goes way, way up. The quality of the prospect goes way, way down.

A point of diminishing return becomes apparent.  Processing tons of prospects doesn’t guarantee more sales. Worse, numbers game activities can eat up valuable runway space and results in closed opportunities that carry a terrible, even unaffordable, price. It’s no longer sufficient to say any organization can sell (or manage) to the tune of just numbers.

Method 2: Regulated Volume – Strategic Results

The key management factor here is to regulate the volume to better qualify the prospects before engaging the costly sales process. With fewer resources or even with the same resources but higher quotas, defining the prospect, managing the prospecting process and inspecting what you expect are time- tested actions.

+ Don’t allow prospects into the pipeline (or prospecting channel) that don’t fit simple yet concrete parameters.

+ Deal with the ripe bananas, only the ones that can take advantage of a limited window of opportunity.

+ Deals won will increase because you have much fewer distractions and more on top of your game.

MosaicCRM Experts Tips – Looking at an improved management role for CRM

Allocating resources is critical, so is monitoring results to optimize these resources. Our CRM platforms provide a number of methods that go beyond traditional ‘activity measurement’ reports.

• Manage Call Ratios & Results: The key analytics determine how good the prospect demographics are.
• Monitor promotions with ‘Opportunity Source’ analytics: From Prospect to Customer can be a tricky course. Analyzing what prospects become customers  reinforces the call ratio and delivers a ‘success’ criteria blueprint to copy

• Aging Analysis: Tracking the time periods through the sales stages provides data to modify promotions/sales processes to shorten the sales cycle.
• Measure Deals Lost Analytics: Lost Deals tell a lot about customers, competitors, pricing, timing and more that will enable you to fine tune the next offering.

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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