101 Best Sales and marketing Ideas
IDEA 95:
BENCHMARK YOURSELF
You may be pretty good at selling (even though you say so yourself), but do you know how you compare with others, not just in your organization, but also more widely?
Idea
From consultants Miller Heinman …
This company specializes in the sales area. It does not regular research, and one survey, conducted in conjunction with Quest Media Ltd, and published in the journal Winning Business, reviewed current practice and looked to the future. It examined the changing sales role, customer expectations and beliefs, and the whole way sales teams are organized, staffed, rewarded, and managed.
Key finding indicated that:
- Customers are becoming better informed and more organized, demanding, and sharp in their dealings with sales people (with the internet being used to a significant extent for pre-buying research).
- Technology is having, and will continue to have, an effect on sales activity. Most dramatically it is replacing sales people with electronic, impersonal buying, although this is not affecting large numbers of business areas. The dynamic nature of this area is evidenced by the uncertainly respondent reflected in their forecasts of what other influences are becoming important.
- Recruitment is a perpetual challenge, as is retention.
- CRM is becoming a more widespread basis for many customer interactions, and creating a more formal basis for them.
- Training remains a constant need (and more of it is being done, and the range of ways in which it is done are also increasing), as the level of competency of sales people is seen as key to success.
- Reporting takes a high proportion of working time, reducing sales people’s time spent face to face with customers. This is despite the increasing computerization of data collection and reporting systems.
In practice
- Such an examination is likely to be any organization wondering whether its sales operation is maximizing opportunities. (Maybe one day it will be updated).
- Any opportunity to examine and learn about how other people operate should be taken; such information is likely to be useful to any organization or any individual.
- At best one fact that emerges, as with the ideas here, could be adopted or adapted, and change your own practice for the better.