Measuring analogue sales

In the old world of analogue sales, you could measure the calls a person made, the entries in the CRM and the amount of business a person closed.  We all know that salespeople scam this and we all know salespeople that put dreams and hopes into a CRM.

You cannot run a business on hopes and dreams.

So how do we get data driven in sales?

In this blog I explain what digital measures look like and in this blog I explain what the outcome of a digital sales project looks like.

Measuring digital sales

In digital you can measure all the leading indicators, you can see if a salesperson's network is growing or if it isn't.  You can measure how many likes and comments a salesperson gets.  For a salesperson this is gold and of course if a salesperson isn't having conversations they are not going to make their number.

These numbers can be used by the CFO to see how on track the business is and Finance can get visibility of these leading indicators way before CRM.

And it's binary, if a salesperson is contributing and if they are not contributing, you can measure it. 

Just to repeat myself, in this blog I explain what digital measures look like and in this blog I explain what the outcome of a digital sales project looks like.

Just think about how you can run a business, knowing all of these leading indicators at your fingertips. No waiting for reports. No needing to guess how accurate the CRM is. No need to work out of the salespeople are telling the truth.  No need to guess if you should invest in the business.  No need to guess if a salesperson is contributing.

Everything you need to know to run both the a sales team and a business.

It is entirely reasonable that using the DLA Ignite methodology that you should be able to raise your revenues by 20% and shorten your sales cycle by 30%.  Now you won't be able to do that in "hints and tips sessions" they are a waste of money, same with Linkedin only training.

It needs to be a methodology and it needs to cover aspects to make you social.

What return can I expect? - What is the ROI here?

As I mention above you should be looking at a direct impact on your revenues, which breaks down as

  • Each salesperson should (at a minimum) should be able to get an additional meeting per week.
  • Let's assume that, your salespeople are able to get one proposal from 4 meetings, I'm sure your sales team is way better than that, but let's be conservative here.
  • Let's assume your sales team converts and closes one in three proposals.
  • That means with social selling and I know your sales team is better than this will be able to get one additional win with social selling per quarter.
  • Let's assume your average deal size is $100,000, thats 4 deals a year or an additional $400,000 per salesperson per year.
  • Scale that across 100 sales people and you have an additional $40 million.

Social selling pays for itself! 

I don't believe you Tim!

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, fast forward to 19 minutes 55 seconds. Chris talks about a $2.6 million win from being on social, after completing the DLA Ignite social selling and influence course. 

So who's social selling?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling?  Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind” 

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.

Here at DLA Ignite we don't do "hints and tips sessions" we don't want you to waste your money. Our social selling and influence methodology will provide your sales team with the stable platform for growth. It is also the only social selling program based on 70:20:10 change management principles which gives your business the mindset change and habit change they need in this digital world.