I recently participated in a webinar addressing the question: Does Access to Timely/Accurate Metrics Make a Difference in Performance?  The short answer: you betcha!

Percentage of overall revenue attained was 7.5 points higher (78.3% vs. 85.8%) and percentage of reps meeting/beating quota was 6.5 points better (52% vs. 58.5%).  But as noted in my comments during that session (register to listen to recorded webinar at Birst) and in a soon to be released white paper, these are lagging indicators.  That is, by the time you know what these numbers are, they're history.  And you may be too if they're bad enough.

As long as you're tracking historical figures, you are by definition playing catch-up.  If all you have are race results, you never have a chance to impact the outcome of the race.  You are forever behind.

How to get ahead?

Last week I had the good pleasure to co-present to a group of start-up CSOs, CMOs and CEOs.  The companies were different sizes, and maturities, mostly high-tech (some software, others hardware and manufacturing).  Also presenting was Anneke Seley, founder of PhoneWorks and author of the new book Sales 2.0, and Bill Binch, VP Sales at Marketo.  Bill talked about sales and marketing alignment and marketing automation-the New CRM.  Anneke defined Sales 2.0 and gave examples of various client success stories.  I presented data from our 2010 Sales Performance Optimization study comparing Start-Ups metrics with companies identified as Dominant players in their markets.

CSO Insights participated in the Sales 2.0 Conference hosted by Selling Power in San Francisco earlier this year and again last month at the East Coast event in Boston (Sales 2.0 Boston). When you attend these events you'll see a mix of vendors that may be familiar (Genius.com, GoToMeeting, RIM) and others that you may not have encountered (Kadient, ConnectandSell, Xactly). CRM vendors are also represented.

You may be wondering is Sales 2.0 really CRM 2.0? Hopefully this article will provide you some answers to these questions.

In a white paper we produced two years ago, we offered the following definition:

Sales 2.0 focuses on aligning steps in the sales cycle with those in the buying cycle by leveraging technology, process improvement, and sales knowledge to effectively collaborate with the most appropriate individuals (internally and externally) and doing so in the preferred format of each.

Sales 2.0 does not necessarily change what salespeople do; it changes how they work to become more efficient and effective. The essence of Sales 2.0 is:

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Maybe You've Heard ...

Unless you've been living in Ted Kaczynski's old shed the past several months, you've likely heard, "It's a global financial crisis, definitely a recession (confirmed 12/01/08, duh), the worst since the Great Depression." For sales professionals and the executive teams of their respective companies, the reality is that turbulent times cause chaos for sales. No matter how many years of selling you have under your belt, the uncertainty that comes with each economic slowdown (real or imaginary) will test you to the core.

A Tougher Ride with Fewer Horses?

Many companies are not looking to hire new people. A sneak peek at our 2009 survey responses show one-half of firms expect to remain the same size or decrease, the highest number since 2005. And yet there is little appetite in these same companies to reduce the overall revenue target; only 14% of these companies expect their 2009 target to be the same or lower. At the recent Sales 2.0 Conference held in San Francisco last month, only a handful among the 150 attendees raised their hand when asked if they expected their revenue target for 2009 to be lower. So how do you plan to make your number when times are tougher, targets are somewhat higher and headcount is, at best, the same?

Citius, Altius, Fortius

There is a management maxim that is especially appropriate to metrics: citius, altius, fortius. With the Beijing Olympics spectacularly just finished, it seems especially appropriate because it is the Olympic motto: faster, higher, stronger.

But as a sales manager you need to know one more thing: faster, higher and stronger than what?

In other words, you need baseline and continuous metrics.

Imagine you're a high school track coach (hey, Olympians have to start somewhere). You have eager and talented kids on your team, and despite all the pep talks that the endeavor is about more than just winning, their eyes and faces are much brighter when they do win. And be honest, you feel better about your efforts and theirs when they win.

So you put the sprinters through the usual paces: lots of wind sprints for speed, much longer runs for endurance, weight training for strength, and you offer the usual bromides about getting plenty of rest. But they're not winning. So you double down and have them do more of all of these regimens; their losing streak continues, your workout routines become even more grueling; they start complaining and some may even drop out. Your "coaching" is reduced to simply imploring (or yelling): "Run faster! Try harder!" Nobody is having fun.

There are a number of areas you could look to in defining Customer Management: marketing, sales, service, and support. We test six different metrics in our Sales Performance Optimization survey. These include the ability to: Effectively introduce new products; Farm additional opportunities and develop account to fullest potential; Regular/effectively communicate with customers; Renew business with existing customers; Create customer loyalty; Create/maintain cast studies/references. Survey participants are given four answer options for each metric: Needs Improvement; Meets Expectations; Exceeds Expectations; Do Not Know.

For the purposes of this writing we focused on the middle four options and leave introducing new products and maintaining case studies for another time. This leaves farming additional opportunities, regularly communicating, renewing business and creating loyalty as our customer management filters. The numbers are consistent and point to the value in several areas of managing customer relations--and technology’s role in doing so.

In early 2007 CSO Insights solicited input from call center management members. Over 300 companies responded to our request for participation in this research project. The firms taking part in this study represented a cross section of multiple industries. Figure 1 below shows the breakdown of the participation by major industry segments: financial services, technology firms (computer hardware, software, and communications organizations) professional services firms (technology services and business services organizations), non-high tech related manufacturing, and other firms (outsourcing centers, healthcare, retail, travel, etc.
Figure 1

Regarding breakdown of call centers taking part in the study by size: 22% had 50 or fewer reps; 19% had 51-150; 14% had 151-500; and 46% had >500 call center reps. Call/contact centers are now transitioning from Service Only to include some sales/revenue component in their activities. Once again, the definition and delivery of sales is evolving.

Develop and Maintain a Customer Strategy for Profitable Growth

This month's topic is relevant and timely. CSO Insights has just released its 2008 Sales Performance Optimization report and tuning into and strategizing for customers both need attention. More than 1500 companies responded to this year's survey and more than half of them (54%) indicated a need to improve in the area of developing strategic plans for key prospects.

This isn't just a nice thing to do. We looked at overall company quota achievement and found that companies that need to improve in this ability averaged 87% of overall company revenue targets; those meeting expectations in this ability averaged 90% of company quota; those exceeding expectations reported 92% of quota.

It appears that taking the time to develop a strategic plan does in fact pay tangible returns. Many companies think that sales training can help with the strategic account planning aspect of selling. And we found that sales organizations that have formal training programs performed better than those which do not. But an even more interesting trend that our analysis surfaced is related to the type of sales methodology the companies were using.

In my last blog I gave a very brief overview of the Sales 2.0 (S2.0) conference held in San Francisco. At that conference I presented, along with my partner Jim Dickie, what we consider to be some of the main points of S2.0 and a few examples of firms already journeying down this path. Our definition of Sales 2.0 is:

1. Increased communication and collaboration between sellers and buyers and within selling teams. The Sales 2.0 environment is heavily dependent upon technology (including Web 2.0 offerings) to do everything from routine contact and account management to increasingly sophisticated opportunity management and prospect collaboration.

2. Proactive and visible integration of knowledge and measurement of the buying cycle into the sales cycle.
Does Social networking have a play here? The answer is ABSOLUTELY!

On October 30th, Jim Dickie and I presented at the first ever Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. The event was well attended and featured best selling author Geoffrey Moore (author of "Crossing the Chasm" and others), Stu Schmidt pinch hitting for Dave Berman, president of worldwide sales at WebEx, along with many others.

Nearly 400 folks attended the conference and its many sessions. There was also a solutions provider exhibit area and many new applications to check out. But one of the coolest was Altus. Here's how they describe their service: They record sessions like Tivo. Make them available for playback like YouTube. And allow you to search these like Google.

I thouhgt it was just a clever way of seeing how many hot companies they could toss out in their elevator pitch but it's TRUE! Within 24 hours of the conference ending, all sessions were available with video, synched up with the presenter's PowerPoint slide deck and, get this, a full transcript! The transcript scrolls as the video plays and you can word search titles and text. There's more but check it out for yourself at http://sales20conf.vportal.net/