The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In the case of sales, it means losing business and revenue because you’re sticking to strategies that just aren’t working.
But how do you analyze sales performance? What sales analytics tools will help get the job done? What’s the best approach to take? In today’s blog, we’ll give you 7 steps for actionable sales analysis. With an effective sales analysis process in place, you can bring your sales team to the next level and help your company reach their sales goals. Read on to learn more.
1. Determine the Goals for Your Sales Analysis
Before implementing a full-blown sales analysis process, you need to make sure you and your team understand what the goals are for your analysis.
Find what sales data you want to look at and how it can help you reach your goals. Are you wanting to increase revenue? Increase customer satisfaction? Get more repeat business or longer contracts? By clearly outlining the goals of your analysis, it’ll be easier to know what to focus on. Map out what you think the goals of your analysis should be before taking the next step — consulting other members of the company.
2. Collaborate Closely with Stakeholders
The goals for your sales team are important to iron out at the internal level, but make sure you’re collaborating at a larger scale with stakeholders. Your stakeholders will have their own ideas of success for your team, and you want to consider all opinions to determine the best approach for sales analysis. At this stage, it’s good to get as much input as possible. The more diverse your input is, the more you can understand the overall goals of your business. It can also be useful to collaborate with other departments. This can give you different outside perspectives on the expectations of your sales team.
Once you have input from management, stakeholders, and your team, you can move on to defining your target metrics.
3. Define Your Target Metrics
Next, you need to clearly define your target metrics. There are plenty of sales metrics out there to consider, but to give you a jumping-off point, here are five of the most common:
Lead conversions - You want to understand and analyze your lead conversion rate. Your lead conversions tell you how often your leads and prospects turn into revenue. With lead conversion rate analysis, you can figure out if your marketing and sales team’s best practices are resonating with audiences, and how you can improve this section of the sales funnel so you lose fewer potential sales.
Growth Rate - You want to look at your sales growth and find out how much revenue your team is bringing in compared to previous periods. By analyzing sales growth, you can find out if your team is improving or stagnating. This will help you identify what needs to be done in order to get your sales team profitable and firing on all cylinders.
Product Performance - Analyzing product performance can help you realize which products or services are your best, and find out which products aren’t performing as well. This can also help you see what the weaknesses are in lower-performing products, allowing you to update them or eliminate them from your inventory.
Individual Sales Rep Performance - Getting a macro analysis of your sales team is useful, but it helps to do a more granular analysis as well. Make sure to see where sales reps are succeeding at the individual level and see where they might need support or additional training.
Sales Targets - Sales targets can help your team see if they’re hitting quotas and how they can improve in the future. With sales targets in your analysis, you can find paths to a more productive sales team.
These are just a few of the target metrics your team can pursue. Whatever target metrics you choose, make sure that you get as much data as possible so you can perform an accurate analysis. Keep in mind, you can and should track multiple metrics. This will allow you to conduct a more complete and comprehensive analysis that will be highly useful to your stakeholders and your sales team as a whole. Now it’s time to gather your data.
4. Gather Relevant Data and Perform an Analysis
Now you have your goals and target metrics determined. It’s time to gather the relevant data together so you can perform your analysis. This will take some time, but it’s important to get all the data you can to perform the most accurate analysis possible. Make sure to collect historical data as well, if it’s available. Using a sales elevation platform can help you collect your data.
With your data collected, you can use software tools like your sales elevation platform or your own proprietary methods to conduct your analysis. Next, you’ll need to compile this data into a report.
5. Develop a Pragmatic, Goal-Oriented Report
Raw data is useful, but you need to create something that’s readable and actionable. Take the data you’ve gathered and develop a report that includes the findings from the analysis and goals based on the findings. The report should be functional and formatted well, so the points can be easily communicated to sales teams, stakeholders, and anyone else that may need to read it. You should also make sure your report is easy to find and share for the people who need to see it. Storing your reports in an easily accessible hub will ensure everyone has proper access.
Again, this is where tools like a sales elevation platform can make your analytics process easier. With your software tools, you can compile and generate reports that will be useful for your team and for improving your sales strategies.
6. Share Your Reporting and Cultivate Stakeholder Input
Make sure everyone who needs to see your reports has access and the ability to share input with you. In particular, make sure you’re consulting your stakeholders on your reporting methods and analysis. Stakeholder input can help you refine your reporting and optimize it to reflect stakeholder interests.
As you iterate on your analysis process, make sure you continue to involve stakeholders. You want to continually improve your analytics, but you also want to make sure you’re refreshing your process as the needs and goals of your business change. By consistently updating your process and cultivating input from the stakeholders and team members that matter, you can develop and generate the best analysis possible to help bring your sales team to the next level.
7. Identify Key Initiatives to Turn Your Analysis into Action
Finally, set key initiatives based on your analysis. With your findings and newly uncovered knowledge, you can begin to make meaningful improvements in the sales process. It’s also essential to continue to conduct analysis on an ongoing basis. This will allow you to track improvement, identify new opportunities, and continually improve.
Make sure to measure performance based on your analysis as well. See if the strategies and processes you put in place based on your analysis are working. By measuring performance, you can find out if you need to make adjustments to your metrics or goals.
Collaborate to Elevate Sales Performance with Flockjay
If you’re looking to quickly bring sales performance management to the next level, Flockjay can help. Flockjay is a sales elevation platform that gives your team access to tools for peer-to-peer learning, sales coaching and training, and much more.
WIth Flockjay, the best processes and strategies win, allowing you to meet and break through your sales goals and targets consistently. Get in touch with us to try Flockjay for your sales team.
