The great thing about sales is the volume of information available to those that have the time to read it, and some you should, especially those on the Blogroll to the right.  I suppose with Sales 2.0 you can double that, add the wave of info relating to selling in a recession – in a recovery – in whatever, and you can get lost in it all.  But with all this advice, wisdom and insight, it is still surprising how few sales people know or take an interest in the most important information they need to know, the key conversion rates.

These key conversions are:

Lead to Prospect
Prospect to Proposal
Proposal to Close

Yes simple, but foundations usually are, that’s what allow you to build great things on them.  Yes simple, but I will bet you if you asked the next ten sales people you meet, less than half will be able to tell you their own.   Some will tell you with great conviction that it depends, you know what we say to that: “Depend is an adult diaper”.   There are reasons, some are too modern and see no room for these factors, yet even in Web 2.0 circles the measure of success is conversion.

It really doesn’t take much to track them, a piece of paper and crayons will do, but with all the tools and dashboards available, it is still surprising that sales people do not have a lock on these numbers.  But it does lead to the question of how they plan in broad terms and specifics if they don’t track these.  How can they decide how much time they need to allocate to given activities; how can they understand which aspects of their game they need to focus on improving; how can execute their plans, territory and account plans.

Once you do focus on the key conversion points you find that you can develop and execute improvement plans much more easily and effectively.  As a manager you can coach to very specific objectives and help reps overcome challenges one step at a time, help them maintain an improvement course based on facts and metrics rather than gut feel.

Starting is not hard, you just need to start measuring, don’t get hung up if the numbers are good or bad, high or low, at first just get comfortable measuring, and establish a base line.  Once you have that base line you will see a few things you can begin to change, again there is no right or wrong element to start with, the key is to focus on just one, you will not be able to change everything at once, and if you try you will just frustrate yourself, give up and go back to your previous ways.  Much like any new routine, fitness, diet, what have you, the key is to have a plan, pace yourself and stay with it.

Understand that these are not the only things involved in sales success, but they are fundamental, once you master this and make it part of your over all strategy, it will help you in improving other elements of your sales even those that are more subjective.  If sales indeed is partly are and partly science, these conversion rates will help you master the science so you can unleash the artist in you.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto