The movie Moneyball opens today to some great reviews such as this one at Sports Illustrated. I read the book by Michael Lewis soon after it was released and as a quant I found the story fascinating. What a great pair Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta were that came together at the right time! What I liked about the story was just like predictive analytics, all the statistics focused on solving one problem, and that is getting the best trade-off against a precise outcome. In this case, get the most wins with the least money — aka, Return on Investment. It was the book I would give to our sales managers saying “Like sports? Like making money? Here’s a book for you!” Here we’ll not review the book, the movie or Brad Pitt’s performance. Instead I’d like to share what we can learn about building a great sales team using analytics: DEFINE THE RIGHT METRICS It took a series of calculated steps to determine that wins were driven not by batting average but on-base and slugging percentage. How did they discover that? Set the outcome first and then run “simulations” of various predictors until one comes the closest. For sales managers, if exceeding quota is the desired outcome, …Read More
Tag Archives: performance
Sales and Marketing Alignment: Would you put your livelihood in the other guy’s hands?
In a recent issue of BtoB magazine, sales and marketing alignment was the subject of a special report. As I read the articles, I observed some broad themes: Marketing manages the call center Inside sales is nurturing leads longer Technology gains a more prominent role All of these ideas were solid, and they have a track record in many organizations. These well-recognized trends shared by industry leaders were very illuminating. We might think there’s progress, at last. Maybe it’s just me, but I felt the “let’s bring this together and make it work dammit” sentiment I was picking up was missing something completely. Whenever I try to solve problems, my instinct is to search for a similar situation at another place, explore how it was solved, and capture any lessons learned. There are not many problems that nature and human history haven’t already encountered. My approach is not perfect, but often it breaks the thinking rut I’d be in. As a private pilot, one such place I go searching is aviation. I thought of the relationship between the Air Force and the Army. They each do different things and have a parallel life for the most part, but in modern day warfare …Read More
Top 10: Performance issues that keep sales managers up at night
One of the hottest recent Q&A topics at the Focus.com Sales forum dealt with this question: “What are the 10 things sales managers should be most worried about in maximizing performance?” Below is Valgen’s answer from our analytics view: * * * * * I am going to answer this question a bit more from my perspective, which is how can managers using data and insights to improve performance. These are worrisome in the sense that being insidious, if left unmanaged they could lead to real headaches. Customer: Let’s put the customer front and center here. How well do they know the customer, both historical as well as expected behavior? If they do not anticipate and use both dimensions to add value to every customer interaction, then this could be the most worrisome aspect of all. Cycle: Do the sales people have a good idea of customer buying cycles, and have a consistent process to manage these customer touches? CRM System: How well are they using the CRM system? Is it up to date, enriched with analytics and metrics, and easy to use? Are you training, listening to feedback and making it work for them? Educate: Have an active outreach program …Read More