Ray Collis

Measuring Success: In Search Of The Ultimate Sales Metric

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What’s The Best ‘WHY’- Related Metric?

What metric can be used to measure the extent of engagement with the buyer in building a compelling business case/justification for the purchase?  The metric we suggest would be around the following question:

‘Have you helped the buyer to build a compelling reason/justification to buy?’

A little about the wording: we all know that simply handing the buyer a pre-baked ROI has little value.  That is why it is worded ‘helped the buyer to build..‘ as opposed to’ presented the buyer with…‘  The buyer has to be involved in the preparation of an ROI if he, or she is to believe it and to ‘sell it’ to other stakeholders in the decision.  

For this reason the answer is not necessarily, a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  Ideally, it would be a scale that reflects the extent of progress the seller has made in respect of seeing, challenging and shaping the buyer’s numbers on a 1 to 5 scale:

  • Know the buyer’s key metrics (relevant to the decision) = 1
  • Have discussed the costs-benefits with the buyer = 2
  • Have helped the buyer to quantify the benefits in terms of his/her metrics = 3
  • Have helped the buyer to calculate total cost of ownership = 4
  • Have helped the buyer to calculate an ROI that he/she uses internally= 5

The scale is shown visually below:The steps towards building a compelling justification for the decision

When Numbers Are ‘The Holy Grail’

We are realistic, the salesperson won’t always get to the see the buyer’s numbers.   For some buyers the numbers are the equivalent of the ‘Holy Grail’, with valid confidentiality and other reasons to keep them secret.

However, there are very few situations where the salesperson and the buyer can’t engage in some way in the numbers conversation, whether it is using industry averages, rules of thumb or sample data.

Moreover, there are almost no situations where the seller can’t discuss with the buyer what metrics can or should be used to measure success and how it might be calculated.  It is not easy, but that is what makes it so powerful.

 

A Meaningful Metric?

How effective would such a metric be in changing behavior? Could it help drive or indeed predict sales success?

Having such a metric would institutionalize building the economic justification for the purchase. That can only have a positive impact on sales.

A salesperson who moves from 4 out of 10 to 6 out of 10 opportunities where the business case is being discussed would be expected to demonstrate at least a corresponding increase in sale success.

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