Increase Sales Success Through Better Sales Analysis">
Even seasoned Sales professionals and managers will sometimes confuse reporting and analysis.
After all, reporting and analysis are both dealing with similar things, in similar ways. So, what’s the distinction?
How is sales analysis different from reporting? And more important…why does it matter?
True sales analysis differs from reporting in that analysis involves making judgments. While sales reports will show quantitative data that reflects what’s been happening, sales analysis is about making qualitative judgments about what the quantitative data is showing.
For example, a report can be generated to display relative performance between various customer acquisition efforts. Great! Now everyone who views that report will see an accurate representation of what’s been happening with those efforts.
But while this perspective is certainly valuable, true sales analysis will go further and seek to answer a few more questions.
In addition to answering the “what’s happening” question, sales analysis should, at a minimum, also answer the following:
What’s good and what’s bad? Taken alone, data and metrics cannot be viewed as good or bad…they are what they are. But through comparative analysis processes, we can determine which metrics and trends are “bad” (i.e. outside the norm, to the negative) and which are “good” (i.e. outside the norm, to the positive).
How do we prevent the bad? Of course, the point of sales analysis is to change the outcomes that will manifest in the future for the better.
The GOAL of every high-performance sales team should be to……
“Proactively creating the conditions where more deals, that are more profitable, with better customers, are the natural result.”
Why, because it sets teams up for continuous improvement. You can always aim to be just a little bit better than you are right now.
It also serves as a good touchstone for figuring out which activities you should focus on.
To that end, an analysis will seek to understand why the negative outliers are occurring, whether those things can be fixed, or whether they just need to be scrapped.
How do we emulate the good? To drive profitable growth in a big way, we not only have to fix or kill what’s not working, we have to emulate what is working. Through sales analysis, we want to understand why the positive outliers are occurring and how we can replicate and magnify them.
Obviously, reporting is prerequisite to analysis…because you can’t analyse what you can’t see.
However, reporting alone leaves the readers of those reports to make their own judgments and draw their own conclusions, based on their individual biases, levels of understanding, and capacities for critical thought.
In sharp contrast, true sales analysis seeks to reach more accurate judgments and make more profitable recommendations, based on data and facts.
Effective sales analysis allows you……. Take advantage of past deal to win future sales.
"WINNING SALES ORGANISATIONS DON'T LEAVE SALES TO CHANCE, THEY LEARN FROM THEIR SUCCESS AND THEIR LOSSES, INTEGRATING THAT KNOWLEDGE INTO THEIR SELLING PROCESS TO WIN MORE DEALS AND DELIVER CONSISTENT RESULTS."
- Know why you are winning and losing deals!
- Disqualify and Qualify better!
- Shorten your sales cycle!
- Execute with confidence!
- Convert more !
- Discount less !
Building a predictive process by proactively engineering the overall sales process such that it reliably generates the desired outcomes as a matter of course is the goal.
If you would like to know a little more "About Mark", please follow the link for a brief profile view.
https://www.predictablesuccess.com.au/lp/mark-lenthall
Predictable Success can examine your sales processes and deliver an accurate road-map after determining where you’re on track and where you need a course correction. Predictable Success can provide a cost/benefit analysis and expert recommendations to improve your sales performance on every level.
