What should you be measuring? Insights from Sales 2.0 Conference

Pelin Wood Thorogood of Aegean Group spoke about how Marketing can significantly increase the number of qualified leads with the same marketing budget.

Critical to success is implementing a culture of measurement. She recommends tracking the following statistics be analyzed in the Marketing Dashboard are how campaigns were performing, cost per impression, cost per click, cost per conversion and lead scoring.

Sales also is a lead generator. Statistics to measure include these:

• Pipeline velocity (size & shape)
• Stealth pipeline
• Days to win vs. days to use
• Pipeline at risk
• Future pipeline
• Pipeline bloat
• ... and more!

Smart, savvy companies are adopting a culture of measurement. The biggest challenge is related to accountability. People are afraid; want to hide what they're doing. But it brings great value because it adds visibility & predictability.

Alex Scalisi, Director of Business Development at Vertical Response gave a compelling presentation on how his company was using LucidEra's to identify risks and opportunities in their pipeline.

Barry Trailer from CSO Insights pointed out that a recession drives the need for the analytics.  And, to emphasize the point, Gerhard Gschwantner from Selling Power quoted Warren Buffet, "When the tide goes out, you can see who has been swimming naked!"

David Holmes, VP of Sales Ops from Informatica, has implemented a compensation management system. Results achieved include:

• Radical reduction in reconciliation drama
• Less stress at end of quarter
• Greater trust
• Increased management productivity

Additionally it allowed them to expand the sales force by 25%, with a 50% reduction in admin support.

Barry Trailer sees that the real value of the Sales 2.0 analytics is that it enables Sales Management 2.0 coaching - focused on the real issues, making a real difference.

Comments

[Charles H. Green]

Jill, with respect, let me disagree about the idea that "Critical to success is implementing a culture of measurement."

We live in a business culture where the god of measurement is way, way over-worshipped.

Here's an intersting post of what the metrics-mania has done.
http://drop.io/RobMarkey/asset/give-me-a-10-part-2-holy-cow

It isn't just sales; it's business in general that has basically bought a behavioralist viewpoint that reduces management to a series of modular processes, coupled with sensors that drive metrics, which are then coupled to behavioral definitions and "competencies" given to humanoids, who are then offered "incentives" to achieve these abstract, quanitative, narrow goals.

This is a perfect description of a Skinner box, designed to train rats to salivate, or otherwise behave in certain ways. The link above gives the ultimate example: employees who have ultimately confused the meausurement with the thing it was supposed to measure.

In my experience, the practical effect of this is to remove human contact and concern for the customer. The customer becomes a number, objectified, subordinated to the seller, and transformed into a poker chip in someone else's game.

There's nothing wrong with short-term measures per se. The problem is managing with short-term perspective. And while it can be done, it usually isn't. It usually just dehumanizes things.

So when I hear someone actually recommending a "culture" of measurement, I have learned to say no, hell no.

You want a culture of customer focus; a culture of respect for people; a culture of teams; a culture of service. All those are great culture. A culture of measurement, if not actually oxymoronic, is a rotten way to incent true customer focus.

We already have way too much culture of measurement; we're already paying dearly for that having become a celebrated goal. Measurement is supposed to be service, not the goal.