Strategic use of sales benchmarking and the resulting analysis ensures alignment between company objectives and sales force strategy, structure and performance management systems.
A sales benchmarking assessment engagement can help you identify where the best opportunities are to shift investments, change capabilities, improve productivity and ultimately hit aggressive sales targets.
Alexander Group’s Sales Benchmarking Assessment framework:
1. Define the Goal
Sales growth plans compel sales leaders to do more than simply increase quotas. Big numbers in challenging times are driving creative new approaches to reach sales numbers through improved productivity and effectiveness. Alexander Group helps you determine whether the organization should:
- Hire more sellers
- Deploy sellers to different customer segments
- Promote different products/services
- Support sellers differently to ensure bigger, more frequent wins
- Hire a different type of seller altogether
2. Select the Approach
What is the best approach to gain support for change in how to take products and services to market? Two dimensions require careful consideration:
- Support from top management: Who makes sales investment decisions and on what basis? The right executive sponsors and a comprehensive road map are needed to support the decisions and changes required.
- Support from the field: A strategy is required for involving and selling the very people whose support will be vital to implementing change─the sellers and their managers. Alexander Group can help design the right approach.
Using our proven Revenue Growth Model™, Alexander Group can provide the guidance needed to plan this roadmap.
3. Get Good Data
Most sales leaders are interested in understanding how they compare to a very finite set of direct competitors. This data is often hard to come by. Alexander Group understands the importance of having the right data–gathered from the right set of close competitors. This set can often be as few as eight or 10 other companies.
Alexander Group benchmark data is hand-gathered and carefully vetted. We carefully cleanse and sanitize every data point before it goes in to the database for benchmarking purposes to ensure the highest possible level of protection, accuracy and relevancy for our clients.
4. Analyze and Interpret
Using comparative benchmarks and analytics to craft a sales effectiveness uplift strategy requires two very important lenses on the data:
- Client context: What does the analysis say in the context of the individual company… i.e. the specific vision, mission and goals, differentiation strategy, culture and capacity to change? Alexander Group’s hands-on consulting approach that entails time on the ground and on site with clients ensures that we capture and understand a company’s specific situation, providing insight and recommendations specific to a particular company’s needs and circumstances.
- Best Practices: What do the analyses and benchmarks say in light of time-tested sales management principles and sales effectiveness best practices? We conduct over 100 sales effectiveness engagements every year, and has done so for over 30 years. We leverage this firm-wide experience for our clients to ensure that the interpretation of sales analytics leads to the right conclusions and recommendations.
5. Devise an Action Plan
Insights and recommendations are good. Specific action steps laid out in the proper sequence are even better. Our approach to strategic sales analytics provides clients with a carefully devised action plan focused on improving sales productivity and growth consistent with their business plan. Action steps are laid out in the proper sequence based on impact, difficulty and ROI.
A complete sales benchmarking assessment provides both top executives and sales management teams with the insight and direction needed to manage the journey to profitable revenue growth.
If you want to learn more about how our Sales Benchmarking practice can help you make sales decisions with confidence, contact us today.
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