How to Measure Sales Effectiveness

Are you like me?

Do you try to look back on a day and consider it time well spent? I hate wasting time. I want to make the most of my selling day and close it out with the feeling of, “I did my job today.”

However, it is not always cut and dry. Consider these two “diary” entries:

Wednesday, July 14

“Dear diary,

Today was not a great sales day. No one signed up for The Sales Vault. I added no new coaching clients. No books were purchased. <<sigh>> Instead, I spent my day talking to three new affiliates who have each agreed to offer The Vault to their members. In addition, I came up with two new workshop titles, filmed next week’s Short Attention Span Sales tip, and spoke with three Vault Insiders to learn more about their sales challenges.

Did I do my job today?”

Thursday, July 15

“Dear diary,

What a great day! Five people signed up for The Sales Vault. Received an email from someone who has three reps for me to coach. Sold three books. The funny thing is, I never set foot in the office. In fact, I golfed all day in a charity tournament!

Did I do my job today?”

Think about the dichotomy of these two “diary” entries. I see two problems:

1. One day’s time is not sufficient enough to answer that question, and
2. It’s the wrong frigging question to ask!

First, change the parameters to weekly instead of daily. A successful sales week can include efficient days where lots of activity happens, days where no customer contact is made but there is plenty of actions taken (such as administrative, research, etc.), and yes, there is even time for the occasional golf game.

Second, split “Did I do my job today?” into two parts:

• Ask, “Was I set up for success each day?” and then …
• “Did I accomplish my priorities?”

These changes shift the focus from results to activities. Do the right sales activities and success will follow.

Make it your goal to be set up for sales success on a daily basis and then look back only on a weekly basis. If it was a bad week, ask, “What would I do differently?” If it was a good week, ask, “What did I do right?”

Tomorrow’s blog:

4 Questions a Manager Should Ask (and 1 They Shouldn’t)

Bill Farquharson’s Sales Vault can be accessed at BillFarquharson.com. Bill can be reached at 781-934-7036.