Inside Sales Lead Management Featured Article

The data presented to sales management, which is used to direct operations, often is sorely lacking.

The data is supposed to help figure out if a company should get more sales leads or even if they should hire more sales staff. But how can someone make that decision if the numbers are not based on solid information?

“I believe that most of these decisions are made with bad data,” Gil Cargill, who is a sales acceleration coach at Cargill Consulting Group, pointed out in a column.

First of all, there is an inherent reason not to trust such data. It is presented by sales staff to their management, and they likely are not forthcoming about any shortcomings, he said.

“I’ve been a sales manager, coach and/or consultant since 1973, and I literally cannot recall the time a salesperson told me that he/she ‘blew the call’ because they made a boneheaded mistake,” Cargill added. He recalls how these salespeople try to shift the blame or give some kind of “sour grapes” justification why sales did not go through. 

Instead, management needs to know how many calls sales staff make each day. What time did they start calling and what time did they conclude? And how many of these calls were follow-ups after friendly contacts as opposed to calling prospects? Cargill says that sales management needs to have access to “leading indicators,” as well. They “provide senior management with insight regarding the future,” he explained. Instead, sales management manages with “lagging indicators.”

“Lagging indicators are … the worst indicators to be utilized for management decisions. After all, we can’t do anything about dollars generated last week, last month, last quarter,” he added.

In addition, companies need to know what is happening in a pipeline, in order to guide sales staff rather than to be their “cheerleader.” In turn, sales processes become more accurate and precise.

To get the kind of information important to sales staff and sales management, remember what is offered by VanillaSoft, the sector’s leading software for sales-by-phone. VanillaSoft offers inside-sales and sales-by-phone software that businesses will find very useful. It lets businesses take their proven sales process and ensure rapid deployment to a sales team. To find out more about VanillaSoft’s new channel, “Inside Sales Lead Management,” please click here.