(Oct. 30, 2007) Sales managers should stop measuring sales performance and start measuring sales proficiency, according to Tom Easton, senior partner with Essential Action Design Group, a consultancy that does field research and develops training and corrective action for salespeople.
"The automotive aftermarket seems to spend a lot of sales time performing service or maintenance work," Easton says. Maintenance work includes spot-checking, reviewing inventories, writing records for the account or putting up a point-of-sale display.
"I encourage managers to measure sales proficiency by looking at the numbers differently regarding account penetration," he says. "Improving proficiency numbers has to do with more than effort. It has to do with the efficiency of overcoming the buyer's objectives. If you offer the highest priced part and the customer says 'no,' that is when the selling begins."
Six factors that impact companies' sales results are pricing strategy, product availability, competitive services, branding and quality of products, sales skills and other issues, he said. Each factor is weighted and has a different impact on the total sales. He assigned the following weights:
- branding and quality of products, 10 percent;
- pricing, 10 percent;
- product availability, 20 percent;
- competitive services, 20 percent;
- sales skills, 33 percent; and
- other issues, 7 percent.
"If availability was the most important factor, than whoever has the most inventory would win," he says. He cited Starbucks as a high-priced commodity-type product that is very popular and has a huge market share.
"Selling skills is rated at 33 percent because a buyer made the decision to buy based on a salesperson's input," he says. "It is all about sales proficiency. How efficient is the salesperson at explaining the features and benefits of the product, improving their knowledge base and partnering with the customer to improve their profitability by selling their product? You need to measure more than a monthly sales report to get those answers."
Measuring results by sales reports can be deceiving if a competitor goes out of business or a customer opens a new store, he said. "In both cases it creates a windfall that was not due to the salespersons efficiency."
