Where do you look to squeeze in the Benefits ??

Often I have had salespeople pestering me to project Productivity, costs & Revenue on the presentation, as a result I have identified some key points which help me identify & project the benefits in the product / solution.

• Increasing productivity
− Reducing the number of tasks
− Reducing time per task
− Reducing skill level needed
− Increasing resource utilization
− Reducing need to add headcount
− Reassigning headcount to more productive tasks

• Reducing costs
− Reducing overhead expenses
− Avoiding planned purchases
− Improving asset utilization

• Generating revenue
− Creating new revenue sources
− Reducing time to market
− Reducing lost revenue such as downtime avoidance
− Optimizing current opportunities

If you want some perspective on how you or  your company needs to enhance their Sales/Client Management Capabilities, please email me at shubhanjan.saha@gmail.com

Sales Dashboard Design Process

The dashboard design process usually consists of a metric selection, design and implementation steps. Each of these steps involve some basic principles outlined below.

Metric Selection

• Supports stated objectives, strategies and goals
• Can be directly impacted by sales management
• Can be measured in a cost effective and timely fashion
• Reflects one of the four key dimensions of sales performance (readiness, productivity, efficiency and effectiveness)
• Enables performance benchmarking with industry competitors and best-in-class companies

Dashboard Design Principles

• Reflects senior management priorities
• Balances internal and external metrics
• Includes measures of past performance and indicators of future performance
• Minimizes the number of metrics in order to facilitate management interpretation

The actual design process is outlined below along with the detailed steps involved:

Metric Selection
• Identify existing and potential metrics by corporate performance perspective (interview process)
• Categorize metrics into four dimensions of sales performance (efficiency, effectiveness, productivity and readiness) and eliminate unclassifiable metrics
• Create preliminary scorecard matrix that combines business perspectives with sales performance dimensions
• Review scorecard matrix for completeness and add metrics based on experience

Dashboard Design
• Eliminate metrics that cannot be measured or are too costly to measure
• Eliminate metrics that cannot be significantly impacted by sales management
• Prioritize metrics based on alignment with stated strategy and goals
• Select top metric per cell in scorecard matrix based on alternative approaches
• Evaluate alternative scorecards and select most appropriate metrics

Implementation
• Assign metric accountability
• Determine performance targets
• Obtain available benchmark data
• Determine monitoring, interpretation and feedback procedures and guidelines
• Develop corrective action review process

If you want some perspective on how you or  your company needs to enhance their Sales/Client Management Capabilities, please email me at shubhanjan.saha@gmail.com