Sales Metrics Highlight Lack of Process

Written By: TMSA Staff | Oct 24, 2016 12:00:00 AM





By Colin Longren, Vice President & General Manager ofcolin-longren-web The Millau Group (www.millaugroupglobal.com)

After reviewing the TMSA 2016 Metric Study, I want to highlight three critical areas of the Sales Metrics Section that executives and sales leaders should be concerned with if they’re in the Transportation, Logistics, and Supply Chain Industry:

  • 64% of the organizations surveyed achieved 75% or less of their initial annual quota (underperformed by at least 25%) for 2015. The average tenure of a Vice President of Sales is reported to be 18-34 months depending on the source. If we are constantly failing to reach our goals, this is a process problem, not a people problem. If you took an important, forecasted sales opportunity and asked each salesperson in your organization to respond with the next best step to move it forward, how many answers would you get?

    It’s difficult to scale with that much variation in execution.

  • The sample reported that 48% of their net new sales were contributed by the outside sales team (vs. inside sales or other channels). Some organizations require salespeople to be responsible for net new business and taking care of current customers. If a salesperson’s workweek is 50 hours and 15% of that is actual selling time (moving a sales opportunity forward/towards close), are they spending time being strategic or just being busy? Being strategic and knowing what to do next on each sales opportunity…would shift numbers dramatically (again, it’s a process problem).

  • Only 6% of the sample’s sales budgets are being allocated towards training or Learning & Development. What is it about this industry that scares its leaders from investing in their sales team to achieve growth? I’ve seen organizations that plan to grow through “more.” More salespeople, more quotes, more trucks, more everything. More does not correlate with more sales…investing in people and process does.

> Click here to view an On-Demand Webinar and download the 2016 TMSA Sales & Marketing Metrics Study.

Tags:

Keep Reading

Marketing

Marketing Budget Priorities Shift during COVID

During the COVID crisis, marketing professionals in the transportation and logistics industry have dramatically shifted the focus of their marketing dollars. Before the COVID crisis began having a...

Strategy

More Transportation Companies Are Looking at Sales Holistically

Sales strategy and operations are becoming more sophisticated among companies in the transportation and logistics industry. At least that’s the findings from the 2019 TMSA Marketing & Sales Metrics...

Digital

7 Steps of a Successful Digital Culture

If you're looking at ways to improve your success in digital marketing and sales strategy, listen to what Marcus Sheridan has to say. One of TMSA's most incredible "thought leaders" and recently...

Contact Us