How to improve sales performance

Many marketing organizations have two extremes-no sales data or too much sales data. Strangely, the team with a lot of sales data did not perform better than the team without sales data. However, any sales process can fully define and optimize management by using a small number of key performance indicators. These data are easy to obtain and track as long as you know what you are looking for.

Secret 2: The golden rule is that there is no golden rule in the world.

A golden rule is that you should know what to do and what not to do when facing some unexpected situations. The golden rule is based on some hard work in the past, so that it can be used and referenced in the future. Here are some general golden rules, such as: put this year's business in order, and the next year's business will be able to operate well on its own; When you lack potential customers, it is the best time for you to do marketing expansion; In the face of customers, even if you don't know what to do, you always have to do more things; You should never try to sell a product to an dissatisfied and leaving customer.

The above golden laws are often wrong, no matter how correct you intuitively think they are. Which is better, developing new customers or retaining old customers? Which is better, often communicating with the most active customers or winning the least active customers with the greatest potential? The answer to the question depends entirely on the data support of your current sales stage, not the success of a certain stage or something in your previous sales process. You need to model your sales process and process relevant data so that they can give you the best choice.

Tip 3: Is there a loophole in your sales channel?

If the sales process is cars, then the sales channel is oil. If you don't have oil or use the right type of oil, even if you are driving a Formula 1 racing car, you won't go far. The most successful marketing organizations often check whether their channels are consistent with their performance indicators.

For example, suppose you need four months to turn a potential customer into your new customer, the probability of success is 1/3, and your goal is to have three new customers a month, then you must ensure that your channel covers at least 36 potential customers. The same logic applies to new contracts, new potential customers and your channels. If you find a loophole in the sales channel, you should take immediate action, but because of the sales cycle, you may not be able to make up for that loophole this year, but you must improve your performance in other ways.

Tip 4: Know when to expand marketing and when not to expand marketing.

If your sales cycle is long, then the fruits of your labor may just appear at the end of the year, and most of them will not be seen until next year. In this case, I can tell you through historical data that a 50% increase in marketing expansion will only increase sales revenue by a few percentage points this year. The secret is to find the problems in marketing as soon as possible and solve them as soon as possible, not just to increase sales revenue by increasing marketing expansion means.

Tip 5: Beware of the idea of "only focusing on this year"

The above point will lead some sales managers to ignore the early sales behavior in the sales life cycle as time goes by, because it seems to have little effect on the promotion of sales figures this year. This logic seems correct, but in fact it is not a wise decision. "Focus only on this year" may have little impact on this year, but it may have a great impact on the coming year.

The idea of "only focusing on this year" is a dangerous trap, which will leave a big loophole in your sales channel at the beginning of each year. The most successful marketing organizations do not manage their sales on the basis of 12 months, but on the basis of rolling 12 months independent of the end of the fiscal year.

Tip 6: Manage the sales time, and don't let it manage you.

Do you know how long it takes to turn a new potential customer into an active old customer? In most cases, it takes more than one year. Assuming that most of your current sales income depends on active customers rather than new potential customers, it means that your efforts to expand new business will not have any impact on this year's performance. Therefore, in addition to knowing whether there are loopholes in your own sales channels, you also need to determine and plan the time period of each stage in the sales process. Once you are sure, what can you do?

Obviously, you want to shorten this cycle as much as possible without affecting the output results. Only within your control can the sales cycle be shortened. Turning potential contacts into target customers may be beyond your control, because you may lack good relations with employees of these enterprises.

However, you can actually have more control over turning potential targets into new customers or turning new customers into big customers. If you try to manage your sales expectations through an excel spreadsheet that is not designed according to the time model, you may find it difficult to manage the sales time.

Tip 7: Choose the Right Tool-Simulated Sales

The last secret to improving sales performance feels simple. The best way to increase sales revenue is to use limited resources in more places that may improve sales performance, rather than trying to do more things with limited resources within a limited scope. This is the optimization of sales resources. You should put your resources into the three or four most important links in the sales process. So, where do you get the resources to do these things? This question is actually very simple, you just need to mobilize resources from those unimportant links. Even if you relax in these places, it won't have any impact on your sales figures. However, the only way to accurately identify key links and non-key links is to simulate sales in your simulation program and see what changes will change your sales figures.