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Benchmarking Inside Sales
To 'Benchmark'
something simply means to measure or judge it
against a known standard. This is an extremely
simple definition for a process that, when applied
to a customer contact operation (call and/or web
center), is anything but simple. Here for your
benefit are benchmarks to use as guidelines and
ways of structuring your thinking:
Every sales cycle is different. It depends on
the target market, the complexity of the product
and/or service offering, the marketing efforts
behind it and the strength of the infrastructure
such as sales force automation, sales support
tools and training .The benchmarks provided are
guidelines for you, not key performance indicators
that you should use to compensate your people.
In order to turn these benchmarks into metrics
that work for your team you need to factor in
the variables in market, product, and infrastructure
support.
With all of that in mind the following are a
set of broad definitions and key variables that
are to be considered in benchmarking productivity
of a Business to Business (B-B) inside sales team.
Benchmarking allows you and your team to know
where your inside sales operation stands today.
A handful of metrics that most inside sales team
track are provided below for your review. Remember
that a thorough BPSI benchmarking audit will consider
the impact of these variables on your organization
and customize them to meet your needs.
Creating
Profitable, Predictable, Measurable and Scalable
Results
Every
inside sales operation is unique and, much like
a doctor would examine x-rays and lab reports,
an BPSI Strategy and Plan is a focused and individualized
review of your center. BPSI can work with you
and your team to develop a clear and complete
understanding of the current state of your customer
contact operations. Beyond that the BPSI team
can work with you to develop an actionable strategic
plan, implement the plan, then manage and fine
tune the on-going operations. BPSI is prepared
to become your partner in success
Inside Sales Metrics:
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Metric
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Definition
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B-B inside Sales
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Average Dials/Day
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Total outbound or inbound
calls answered from the rep workstation.
Report generated from phone system and provided
daily, with weekly averages calculated
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Full Ramp Goal- 65/day
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Average Talk Time/Day
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Total minutes of phone time
as reported through the phone system. Reported
daily, measured and averaged weekly.
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Full Ramp Goal- 180 minutes/
day
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Average Decision Maker contacts
(DMC)/Day
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This may be used to represent
the total number of live contacts that an
agent made during outbound calling or e
mailing to a known decision maker*, or it
may be refined to indicate only the number
of decision maker contacts per Hour. The
ratio of emails to calls should not exceed
60%phone contact and 40% e mail contact
when calculating total contacts/hour
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Full Ramp Goal- 10 /day
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# of calls to close
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The number of anticipated
DMC's required to close the sale.
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benchmark dependant on variables-
range is 3-15
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Sales Conversion Rate
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Conversion can be based
based on the number of Sales divided by
the total number of DMC's or Sales divided
by a key event in the sales cycle such as
demo, evaluations or proposals
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benchmark dependant on variables-
range is 3-25%
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Average Demo/Day
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Demo is defined as a sales
presentation (mini-demo) or a full Demo
covering a features and benefits review.
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Full Ramp Goal- 10 week
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Total Pipeline
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The total amount of revenue
in the sales forecast. Deals x value of
deals = pipeline
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Pipeline Growth
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Total new pipeline revenue
added on a weekly basis, net growth. Measured
through the pipeline reporting from pipeline
revenue comparison on weekly basis
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Growth goals determined
by individual rep territory goals
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Pipeline Accuracy
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Snapshot analysis of pipeline
accuracy on monthly basis. Pipeline for
month captured at beginning of month, then
that same list is tracked for results at
the end of the month to determine % accuracy
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80% accurate at full ramp
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Touched Lead Goal
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Leads Touched- total number
of leads that remain 'untouched' or at 0
lead status for longer than 1 week. Measured
from the lead creation date, tracked weekly
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Full Ramp Goal- 0 leads
remain untouched for one week
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Ramp productivity
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The time it takes a new
representative to be at 100% efficiency
and proficiency after training. Efficiency
is the effective use of tools : phone, SFA,
web conference. Therefore , how much productivity
can be expected. Proficiency is the knowledge
of the product /or service and the ability
to use that knowledge in the sales cycle.
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6 weeks - 6 months efficiency
target should be 6 weeks
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