Are You Ready for 2010?

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The budget process is pretty much done, you have worked with marketing to develop the go-to-market plan, sales roles have been identified and the right talent is on board or planned. You feel good about 2010; you have the right coverage to reach your prospects and customers, the economy seems to be turning if not at least leveling off, you have more training in the budget, your CRM utilization is not bad'¦

So, now what? What are you going to do different this year? How are you going to be sure you know what your reps should be doing every hour, every day, and every month? How are you going to manage your expectations of them? How are you going to track the underlying business plan assumptions that add up to revenue?

First of all, don't wait for anyone to tell you what to do. Daily productivity is a team effort involving both reps and sales leadership. My philosophy on this is that you should set your company's expectations as a whole; make sure there is belief in the sales teams. That includes both the technology and finance departments, not just the more obvious corporate functions such as marketing and customer service.

How much output each rep will realize can be facilitated by sales optimization. Technology can provide systems to make workflow more efficient and minimize time needed to perform administrative tasks. Finance can provide access to the right data, but you also need to work on what to do with that data.

Productivity is largely influenced by the front line sales manager who must have the reporting capability to track relevant statistics. Productivity metrics include many of the obvious stats but also lesser-known activities such as tracking the types of sales calls that are being made and being able to identify the calls that aren't bringing in business. Visibility into these metrics and action plans to drive the numbers allows your sales leadership more leverage to take action before it's too late.

Productivity is about executing every day and having actionable visibility into the details. These are the business drivers that will get you to where you want to be in 2010.