Setting Individual Product Quotas
A key requirement for all companies is the setting of individual quotas for each product in a company's portfolio. SalesStorm can have individual product quotas, so the sales performance of each product can be tracked on a month-by-month basis.
The typical response from sales people regarding individual quotas for each product is that they will focus on the total number, rather than the detail of which products they sell. This is understandable, but companies do spend a lot of money developing several products and want to know that each one is getting the right amount of effort to justify that investment.
As an example, we will consider Xebort Inc, a company that has 5 products. Each of the products has a considerable budget for development and marketing, and to gain a reasonable return on investment (ROI) Xebort Inc requires each product to be actively sold. Any failure to meet the individual product quotas could result in that product being withdrawn, with the resulting loss of profit and potential redundancies.
Xebort Inc is using SalesStorm and has used the analysis capability to discover that sales of Product B are far below the expected level. The Sales Manager has undertaken further analysis with SalesStorm and discovered that the majority of the deals are lost at the 'Demonstration' stage of their Sales Cycle.
The Manager discusses these finding with the sales people at their monthly sales meeting and asks one of them to present Product B as if he were in a customer meeting. The Manager has requested that the Product Development Manager also attend the sales meeting. It becomes clear that although the sales person has a good technical understanding of Product B, but he does not highlight the business benefits the product delivers. The Product Development Manager now understands the issues, and agrees to return in the afternoon to provide product training to enable the sales team to effectively communicate the drivers and benefits of the Product B.
However, usually there are no metrics to assess the success of the training. SalesStorm makes the data collection and analysis a simple process so that Sales Managers can quickly assess the need for further training.
The Sales Manager has also used SalesStorm to identify that Linda; the sales person in the North is selling a lot of Product C, whereas Michael is not successful with that Product in the south. The Manager talks to them both and they agree it would make sense to have Linda undertake some joint visits with Michael so that there can be a transfer of knowledge which results in improved performance for Michael.
With it's unique, powerful graphical analysis capabilities, SalesStorm acts as the catalyst for knowledge transfer throughout an organisation and enables managers to undertake real, pro-active mentoring of sales people.