| | 1. Contacting Ability: If you were to choose to sell direct to the end user (versus using indirect channels of distribution), does the sales force currently have the personnel, expertise, facilities and equipment to contact and then respond to sufficient numbers of prospects to achieve revenue expectations? This may be via advertising, direct mail, telephone canvassing, flyers, etc. Use a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate).
2. Contact Strategy (Frequency): Is the frequency of contact with existing end users and potential end users sufficient to maintain front of mind awareness of with end users? Via telephone, email, mail, advertising, etc. 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate).
3. CRM Usage: Sales people would rather be selling than keeping records and updating information in CRM databases. But, maintaining timely and accurate information on customers and prospects is an important aspect of selling and maintaining a relationship with a customer or prospect. Rate your sales organization's use of your CRM system. Use a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate).
4. Delivery Capabilities There are some products or services that are so essential to the customer that when it is acquired the customer must be assured of an exact delivery date and your ability to meet that date. However, with other offerings the delivery date can be very flexible without major implications for your business. Rate your current delivery capabilities with respect to most customers’ expectations. Use a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate).
5. Demonstration Effectiveness (Product): What is the likelihood that, for the majority of your offerings, a short demonstration will overcome all or most of the prospect's serious doubts about the offering's ability to satisfy their needs? Use scale of 1 - very unlikely to 10 - very likely.
6. Geographic Location of Sales Force: It is important for your sales personnel to have easy access to their prospects, in particular, for on-site sales. Rate the current location of your sales personnel with respect to the market coverage you desire on a scale of 1 - (totally inappropriate) to 10 - (totally appropriate).
7. Information Flow Efficiency: Information flow between members of the sales organization and other parts of your organization with the sales organization is extremely important. Sales people need to know about financial, design, production, marketing/promotional plans, delivery, etc. changes and problems so they have the correct information when they contact customers and prospects. Rate the information flow within your organization. Use a scale of 1 - total inadequate to 10 - (totally adequate).
8. Lead Generation: The worst use of a sales person's time is to have them looking for someone to sell to. Your sales support organization should be supplying the sales person (for direct or on-site sales) with enough prospect names to keep them "selling" at all times. Rate the ability of your sales support organization to generate enough prospect leads to achieve your sales objectives. Use a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate).
9. Lead Nurturing: Sales leads can fall through the cracks and become cold leads and worse yet go to the competition if they are not properly nurtured after they are identified. This requires marketing database systems and promotional programs to maintain contact with prospects to move them through the buying process to the point in time where they become "hot" leads ready to buy at which time they are turned over to sales people. Rate your lead nurturing systems and programs. Use a scale of 1 - total inadequate to 10 - (totally adequate).
10. Logistics Capabilities: When selling a product or a service you are likely faced with a number of "logistics" concerns. This includes maintaining inventory and delivering your offerings to a distributor, dealer, retail outlet or the customer. Rate the adequacy of your existing logistics arrangements for handling the requirements generated by the sale of your offerings. Use a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate).
11. Maintenance Capabilities: Many products or services require maintenance and/or support after they have been sold. Rate the adequacy of your existing maintenance/service operation in providing the necessary support for your offerings. Use a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate).
12. Past Experience: The ability to sell a product or service is a learned capability and sales personnel with significant past experience and good selling records are more likely to be successful in selling your offerings. Rate the average general experience and selling records of your current sales personnel on a scale of 1 - no past experience to 10 - most successful in the industry.
13. Pre Sales Resources / Support: A necessary component of successful selling is the quality of pre sales support that is provided to sales people. Presales support involves working with sales personnel to provide product, business and technical knowledge in support of pre-sales activities. They are responsible for understanding business and technical problems addressed by the products including key regulations, business drivers, evolving business needs, etc. They provide input for support marketing collateral that the sales team uses such as white papers, product fact sheets, communication briefs, etc. Rate your organization's pre sales resources and support. Use of a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate).
14. Product/Service Knowledge: Rate the general product/service knowledge of your sales personnel about your offerings on a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate). How well do they understand the capabilities and user benefits of the product/service?
15. Product/Service Related Training: Rate the product/service related training provided to sales people in your organization. Use a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - total adequate. Training can enhance your sales people’s knowledge of your product/services. How effective is your product/service educational program?
16. Prospect Degree of Need: Rate the degree of need between prospects for the various products and services sold by the company. Use a scale of 1 – (none or extremely insignificant need) to 10 – (complete or almost complete need).
17. Prospect Relationships: Take a realistic look at the technique used by your sales personnel when interfacing with the prospect. Evaluate the extent to which they are successful in establishing a friendly relationship with all of the key decision makers, getting to know their needs and idiosyncrasies on an intimate basis, versus a professional, but less personal, approach of mostly just explaining the capabilities of your offering. Choose a point on the scale from 1 – (establish professional but impersonal capabilities presentation), to 10 – (establish deeply personal relationships with decision makers).
18. Prospect Requirement Analysis: Take a realistic look at the way in which your sales personnel address the prospect's requirements. Do they present the capabilities of your offering and allow the prospect to determine if it meets their requirements or do they attempt to gain an in-depth understanding of the specific requirements of the prospect first, and then tailor their presentation to directly address those requirements? Choose a point on the scale from 1 - sales personnel make a standard presentation to 10 - a customized presentation is prepared for each prospect's requirements.
19. Prospect Source Tracking: Do you know where, when and how your prospect became interested in your product or service? Knowing the source of prospects, is key to finding more of the good ones who end up being profitable customers. How the first contact took place is a key part of developing your contact and touch strategy for that prospect or prospects like them. How well does your organization keep track of the source of prospects? Use a scale of 1 – (totally inadequate) to 10 – (totally adequate)
20. Prospect/Customer Relationship Management Database: Managing prospect and customer interactions and knowing everything about them and who is communicating with them from your end and what is being communicated is a necessity. Rate your organization’s prospect and customer relationship management processes and systems on a scale from 1 – (totally inadequate) to 10 – (totally adequate).
21. Recruiting & Relocation Effort: The recruiting and relocation of qualified marketing and sales personnel becomes a critical process when revenue projections are based on a given number of effective sales personnel being in the field at all times. Estimate the amount of effort required to maintain a full complement of marketing and sales personnel over the sales projection period from none (no additional personnel required) to extensive (numerous personnel required and qualified personnel very difficult to find).
22. Sales Compensation: Your sales personnel need to be properly compensated for their selling efforts to motivate them to do the best job of selling your products and services. Rate your organization's sales compensation program (e.g., salary, commissions or combination of both). Use a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate). Score from two perspectives: level of compensation and the compensation as compared to what competitors are offering.
23. Sales Bonuses or Incentives Required: In today's competitive sales environment an enterprise's success is often determined by the effectiveness of the sales organization. Most sales personnel are driven by the potential for $$$$. So, whether The Enterprise uses distributors or their own sales force, estimate the requirement for bonuses above and beyond the normal salary and/or commissions to achieve revenue objectives. From none (revenue assured without bonuses) to extensive (bonuses required just to get sales personnel to make calls)
24. Sales Facilities: Your sales personnel need a place to call home base, especially if they are remote from the main office. Rate the facilities for your sales personnel on a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) - 10 - (totally adequate).
25. Sales Configuration System: A sales configuration system is a system that allows sales people to quickly identify the needs of a customer or prospect and generate a customized and detailed proposal at the point of sale. Today, these systems are typically computerized and are often linked via wireless internet or other networks to the company’s back-end systems for order entry, order fulfillment, delivery, invoicing, etc. Rate your organization’s sales configuration system on a scale of from 1 – (totally inadequate) to 10 – (totally adequate).
26. Sales Force Skills: Today’s challenging marketplace demands that your sales team be on the top of their game and stay there. Rate the core sales skills for a customer-focused and consultative sales process that your sales personnel have. The area of skills include: being able to build trust and credibility through managing client expectations; being able to accurately assess the situation and uncover client needs; being able to tie your organizations capabilities to the client’s situation; being able to deal with objections, gain agreement and win the business; and being able to build long-term customers for life. Use a scale of 1 – (total inadequate) to 10 – (totally adequate).
27. Sales Performance Management: Is important because it can help you drive better business results by not relying on guesswork, but by using accurate, real-time data on how employees are performing. Do your systems allow you to align sales with corporate initiatives, so that sales personnel and channel partners have a clear understanding of how they are being measured and compensated? Having an effective sales performance management program and systems gives you greater ability to plan and model effectively, analyze performance and make mid-course corrections. A sales performance management system should offer you a framework to plan and model sales strategies and execute sales initiatives in a timely fashion, while giving both sales people and management visibility to performance. Rate your organization’s sales performance management program on a scale of 1 – (totally inadequate) to 10 – (totally adequate).
28. Sales Personnel Effectiveness: When your revenue objectives are dependent on the performance of sales personnel, two critical factors come into play. These are the number of sales personnel and the amount of revenue generation that can be expected from each of them. Rate the ability of your current sales personnel to achieve your revenue objectives on a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate).
29. Sales Productivity Metrics: How well does your organization track the various sales productivity metrics, how many of them and which of them? Are the metrics available in one place or must they be gathered from a variety of different systems in the organization? What types of factors are considered: sales to new vs. existing customers; forecast vs. actual results; selling expense; revenue per customer; number of new accounts; # of proposals submitted; # of contacts made; % of customer adjustments; number of returns; profit per customer; etc.? Using a scale of 1 – (totally inadequate) to 10 – (totally adequate), rate your organizations access to and use of sales productivity metrics to plan, manage and direct your sales operations and people.
30. Sales Quota Setting: Setting the right sales quota is an important aspect of establishing obtainable sales goals and objectives for sales people. If you want your sales people to achieve or even exceed their assigned quotas, you need an effective process for setting quotas. Set them too low and you miss your revenues goals, set them too high and you may end up frustrating your sales people. Rate your organization's processes for setting quotas, including developing parameters, such as historical trends, last year's revenue, national standards, territory analysis, tenure of sales people, sales skills, market realities and potential, competition, etc. Use a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate). If for some strange reason, your organization doesn’t establish sales quotas as part of your compensation/motivational plan, leave the score “0.” If you’re not, you probably should be setting them.
31. Sales Support: A sales organization consists of sales and sales support personnel. The sales support function includes technical support, lead generation, training of sales personnel about your offerings, formal prospect and customer communications, competitive comparisons and much more. Rate the ability of your sales support staff to support the sales personnel on a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate).
32. Sales Territory Coverage Strategy (Model): Optimizing your sales territory design and aligning your resources with the best sales opportunities is a major key to success in achieving your organization’s sales goals. Have you done your homework in assessing where sales opportunities lie? Once you know where your opportunity is, you need to consider what types of coverage and touch strategy is appropriate. The coverage strategy considers “how” and “how often” contact should be made. Is the contact via face to face visits, telephone calls, a self-service approach, electronic or other means? And, how often and how much time sales people will need to touch the customer? You also need to consider these factors as they will affect your coverage and touch strategy: size and number of locations for target companies, complexity of your products/services, the average deal size, the type of sale, new business vs. renewal business. Rate your territory coverage strategy model based on these factors and how specific and quantifiable it is. Use a scale of 1 - (totally inappropriate) to 10 - (totally appropriate).
33. Sales Territory Design: Does your organization have balanced sales territories? For many companies, some territories have too much work or opportunity and others have too little work or opportunity. Sales people in the first case need only to focus on the best accounts to easily make quota, while sales people in the second case are underutilized, may struggle to make quota, and often feel under-appreciated. This imbalance results in lower market share, slower growth, and higher costs due to employee turnover. Balanced sales territories have approximately equal amounts of work or opportunity. On a scale of from 1 – (totally inadequate to 10 – (totally adequate), rate your organization’s ability to balance sales, potential, and / or work among every territory.
34. Sales Territory Management: Effective sales management is a key to achieving your territory sales objectives. Do you have the right sales management coverage for each territory? Are territories too large or too small? Are right number of sales managers assigned to cover the territories and provide support and guidance to the sales personnel in those territories? Use a scale of 1 – (total inadequate) to 10 – (totally adequate) to rate this factor.
35. Technical Support: The sale of some offerings involves complexities that extend beyond the knowledge of the sales personnel. In these circumstances they must call in technical support personnel to respond to the prospect's more technical questions. Considering the complexity of most of your offerings, estimate the frequency with which your sales personnel will have to rely on technical support to achieve sales closure. Use a scale of 1 – (support never required) to 10 – (support always required).
36. Telesales Systems (Call Center) Capabilities: Having the right telesales systems / call center systems to support your in house and outside sales forces is a key component of most organization’s sales operations today. Telesales is an important part of keeping down selling cost and providing field support and adequate market coverage, but without the right call center systems in place, this can create a nightmare of customer and prospect relations.
37. Training & Coaching: The foundation of having a winning sales team is continuous learning and growth of every member of the team. This means that you have to have product and sales training and coaching programs that address the needs of each member of the team to enable continuous improvement of their skills and knowledge. Using a scale of 1 – (total inadequate) to 10 – (totally adequate) rate your organizations training and coaching efforts.
38. Warehousing Capabilities: Rate the warehousing facilities of the company with respect to storage space, stock handling equipment and appropriate geographical locations to satisfy requirements for the volume of sales planned for your offerings. Use a scale of 1 - (totally inadequate) to 10 - (totally adequate). | |