About 10 years ago, I was catching up with a friend of mine, and the discussion shifted to metrics. Our conversation started with college football and his kids, but since he is a craftsman of sales and I’m a metrics geek, most of our catch-up sessions turn to business… still. At the time, he was a Regional VP of a $2B software company that specialized in healthcare, and the memorable thing about that discussion was a statistic that he shared with me. For all opportunities that reached the proposal stage, his company had a 55% close ratio. However, when their prospects visited their corporate headquarters in the Midwest U.S., their close ratio jumped to 93%. His comment was perfect: “I tell my team to do whatever they have to do to get their prospects to corporate. It’s that simple.”
I understand that these numbers are a bit skewed. Only a serious prospect would commit to a visit, but the sample size was large enough to make this a valid statistic: 93% of prospects that made the visit moved forward with an order. Regardless of the deeper analysis of “why”, my friend was right – get the prospects to HQ!
So, what is your Key Metric? What Key Performance Indicators (KPI) do you measure? I’ve observed two extremes in the security industry: some companies don’t measure KPI’s at all, and others measure too many things.
I’ve considered the scenarios of integrator sales people, manufacturer sales people, and sales managers; and have developed a best practice for each. Not a set of best practices, but one best practice for each of you that I believe will make a real impact on how you measure yourself or your team.
