How do you measure sales success!

How do you measure sales success!

Its easy right?

Yes and No.

What is success for your company?

It could be several factors combined but lets start with racking up some good measuring forms.

 

Number of contracts.

Units sold.

Customer satisfaction score.

Number of returning customers.

Average order /purchase

Average order / new customer

Average order / returning customer

Turnover / time

Profit, sales revenue / time

Potential contacts made (pre sale) /time

Number of new customers / time

Number of existing customers that reorder new products / time

Number of existing customers that reorder products / time

Cancellation rate of existing contracts / time

Cancellation rate of new contracts before fulfillment / time

Referral rate

Brand recognition

 

As you can see these are just a few of all they ways that sales success can be measured and be made into pie charts and other easy to present numbers.

So if you can measure the results you can start to have a very good control over different campaigns or changes you do in the sales process.

 

Lord Kelvin wrote, “If you cannot measure it – if you cannot express it in quantitative terms – then your knowledge is of a meagre and insignificant kind.”

Or in other words if you can measure it you then your knowledge is good and significant.

 

Depending on your company’s sales force structure you will want to combine these to get a the best effects.

 

For example.

Case: Wanting to measure the existing customer base.

Then you want to use:

Brand recognition (how important is your brand to them and will that alone make them stay).

referral Rate. (How often do they refer business your way because you are their number 1 choice.)

Number of existing customers that reorder new products / time (do they do this by themselves or do you have to be active? can you make it easier for them to do this? can you sell other products aswell in this way?)

Number of existing customers that reorder products / time (same as above)

Average order / returning customer (why do they buy again from you and can you make them buy more?)

Turnover / time (can you increase this? should you decrease this? is important for your sales success?)

Profit, sales revenue / time (profit margin is always key and to have profits at all is usually a whole lot of factors being combined).

Customer satisfaction score. (what questions do you ask to find this out? is it the right ones? should you ask more or less ones? Who follows up important tips and complaints that come in this way?)

Number of returning customers. (Wanting to make more profits, then this should be a key factor to increase and keep in check).

 

By taking in this information down to every single person involved in the purchase from pre sale to after sale and back office you will be able to measure where and why you sales is a success or see where you will need to make changes to become the number one player in your field.

 

veni, vidi, vici!

 

Regards

 

Patrik Olson

 

 

 

Related articles

• Does Customer Satisfaction Drive Loyalty? (customerthink.com)
• Show 376 – What is Customer Satisfaction (theengagingbrand.typepad.com)
• You get what you measure for (iowabiz.com)
• Customer Frequency – one true measure of success (bettermanagers.com)
• In 2012, what comes first – the sale or the customer’s satisfaction? (customerthink.com)
• add-on sales (patrikolson.wordpress.com)
• The Answers You Need Are In. Now What? (blogs.constantcontact.com)
• Top of mind awareness and brand recognition (Article) (rkilner.wordpress.com)
• How do you measure the success of your banner advertising campaign? (marketing.yell.com)
• Ignore the 5 Ps of marketing at your own peril (summitdiary.com)
• Are Your Customers Silently Seething? (themarlincompany.com)
• A value-based approach to Customer Satisfaction and Product Metrics (onproductmanagement.net)
• The ABCs of Customer Satisfaction (surveyanalytics.com)
• Five Ways to Fail Your Way to Success (skyje.com)