Many companies are in the process of urgently reviewing their prospect/customer base to see where sales might come from in the months ahead as their 2020 vision will certainly be different than it was at the start of the year!

However, there is a need for caution as some potentially good opportunities could get missed through making a hurried, emotional decision in these difficult circumstances and that could cost you dearly. The key is identifying, listing and analysing the critical sales metrics that give you a true picture of what’s actually going compared to what you think is going on; to quote W Edwards Deming, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion”.

We have collated an extensive list of options and this selection of 10 fundamentals will help you to focus on where your time and money is going to be best spent:

1. Customer Name
2. Number of Sales Visits
3. Number of Quotes/Proposals
4. Number of Sales
5. Value of Sales
6. Profitability (for a quick guide, use High, Medium or Low)
7. Lifetime Sales Value
8. Sales Potential (for a quick guide, use High, Medium or Low)
9. Quality of Relationship (for a quick guide, use Great, OK, Poor)
10. Number of Key People (with whom we have a relationship)

Set up a simple, common Excel spreadsheet using these headings and ask each salesperson/account manager to fill in the results for their customers for the last business year/calendar year. We guarantee the resulting picture will be eye-opening and extremely useful in terms of who you should be spending more time with and who you should be spending less time with. For example, seeing which customers place the most orders reveals who is likely to be your strongest advocate and perhaps more opportunity to sell more compared to a one-off but high-value customer.

We hope this proves useful and would genuinely be interested in the outcome so please let us know.

Looking ahead, if you are in the process of taking stock and urgently developing a new sales and marketing strategy that doesn’t depend on sales visits for example, please get in touch as we can help. Our clients recognise that when it comes to something as important as your career or the future of your business, you want expert advice bespoke to your situation, not someone trying to sell you a standard product or a cheap, quick “fix”. With approaching 40 years’ experience of helping clients achieve measurable improvements in business, team and individual performance, you can trust Auricas to provide you with the best advice, best solutions and best outcomes.

We can help you to think more clearly about where you are going, what you want to achieve (and why) and how are you going to get there. Our involvement would help create more discipline in terms of getting things done and also bring an important degree of impartiality to the process; someone who will provide a sounding board for your ideas, challenge your thinking and support you in taking your business forward to “the next level”.