How to measure/quantify that sales people are building relationships with customers.
If you are leading a sales team, how will you confirm that your sales team is actually building positive relationships in the field?
Ideas, experiences and strategies are welcome.
Thanks a million.
Good Answers (26)
Prashant,
One way to gain insight into this would be to send a survey to your clients asking how they perceive your company, whether they feel their needs are being met, etc. The best way to get a high response to a survey is to send a small gift, perhaps a nice pen or mug, along with your request to please take a survey. It has been shown that sending a gift and asking for a small favor generates a much bigger response than no gift, or offering a gift or discount based on participation. You take the first step of giving something away, and then ask them to take a moment to provide you with feedback. This ought to work well and will not only get you the feedback you need but will be one more way that you're engaging your clients and getting them to think about your company.
Joey Flores
StartupArmy.com
Norm N.
President, Lakeport Metalcraft Inc.
Best Answers in: Organizational Development (1), Project Management (1)
I think that Joey's answer speaks to how to approach the customer to answer survey questions, and he offers excellent suggestions to boost the response rate.
I would add that before you approach anyone, define what you mean by "positive relationships in the field". Establish in concrete terms what you want those relationships to look like, then build your questionnaire around those concrete, measurable, factors.
You also want to make sure that the sales team is building relationships with quality prospects - i.e., people/companies who are seriously considering becoming clients, or, better yet, have become clients. Remember, you want to build a client base that buys, buys often, pays on time, and will refer business to you.
Prashant,
The best way to do this is to ask your sales people to schedule a phone conference with the key decision maker for every company at or near the closing stage on their forecast report.
If a potential customer is serious about buying, they should not push back on having such a discussion. Your reason for calling... "since you are interested in becoming a customer, I just want to introduce myself and make sure that (sales person's name) and my company are addressing your needs, providing value and delivering good customer service."
If the sales person cannot get a brief phone meeting for you with someone on the customer side that is key to closing the deal, there probably is not a deal there.
Tom H.
VP, Energy Management at American PowerNet
Best Answers in: Sales Techniques (6), Advertising (1), Business Development (1), Lead Generation (1)
Renewals are probably the easiest way to track.
Also, if you are a Manager you should have contact with your clients as you support your sales professional, who is typically their primary contact. Remember, the Sales Manager should be the best sales professional in the company, not someone who hated selling so much they wanted to become a Sales Manager to escape it. Customers are the fun part of the job and would most likely feel important if the "Boss" thought enough of their business to reach out to them personally.
Prashant: As a sales leader, I believe it is imperative to be in front of "needle moving" deals and key prospects. By ensuring that a good amount of your time as a sales leader is in front of prospects, you will have a live picture of the quality of the relationships being built, and be part of the process for building high quality, positive relationships that result in profitable, long term business.
Andrew ( Drew ) T.
Marketing Consultant: Analytics, CRM, MMO, Accountability, ROI
Best Answers in: Air Travel (1), Direct Marketing (1), Internet Marketing (1), Customer Relationship Management (1)
It is now relatively easy to build independent feedback loops that do not require the subjective interpretation of intermediaries. Additionally, survey design timing and sampling need not be an impediment. Why not use blogs? This is exactly what HP, IBM, Microsoft and others are doing. The best way to ensure there is a relationship that matters is to make sure that it is not left up to one point of contact. This may not be universally accepted, but at the end of the day positive means the relationship is a company asset. The only way to make sure of that is that the customer is communicating directly and in ways that can be measured.
Lynn B.
Google AdWords Certified Professional | Master Certificate in Social Media | Masters Certificate in SEO
Best Answers in: Business Development (1), Customer Relationship Management (1), Lead Generation (1)
As Tom says, renewals or add on sales are the best way to measure successful relationship building.
It’s always easier (and less expensive) to sell more to customers you already have than to acquire new ones, so it’s critical that you get a handle on the add on/renewal opportunities in your business and how to best capture them. Since you can’t manage what you can’t measure, I would suggest that you do some benchmarking around this and set measurable goals.
Start by taking a look at what your top performers are achieving and put numbers on it. For example, in a business I worked in, I benchmarked that our saleswomen should be able to convert renewal opportunities at a 70% rate, and that half of those renewals should be for a contract longer than the minimum. I also benchmarked that every month we should get about 5% of our clients to sign annual contracts.
Those are just a few basic things to start with. Make sure that your benchmarking process is transparent and participatory and that the goals you set are clearly explained to everyone. Also make sure you give them the tools (training, incentives, customer offers, marketing collateral) to meet their goals.
No doubt you will want to measure more things as you go along, but even just having a few measurements in place is a start toward increasing accountability and getting the most out of your sales team.
Using the ACT dashboard, you can set Different stages to an opportunity which allows a measure on the overall totals and then you can look deeper into the individual prospects.
Virginia S.
Experienced marketing and sales professional helping companies focus on sales effectiveness to achieve good growth
There are some key ways to quantify and qualify the relationship development sales people have secured with clients/customers. These are some quick, top of mind thoughts:
--% referrals from existing clients. Have salespeople been able to ask for and receive referrals for business from your existing customer? Especially in the current environment a good reputation and referrals are even more critical.
--What is the length of the relationship with the client? Has the salesperson built the relationship within the client and then garnered business from other areas or subsidiaries within the company? If the salesperson has moved on, was he/she able to bring the business with him? Was he/she able to maintain the relationship for potential business in the future if unable to take when moving on?
When I was with one large company and decided to accept a position elsewhere I received a call from 2 managing directors from this international finance company to ask if they could shift their business to my new company. I didn't need to ask, since the depth of our 4+ year relationship was such they sought me.
--What is your penetration within the client? How does their spending on your product or service compare to overall spend? Do you know? If the relationship is solid, you should know.
--Are you a trusted adviser where projects don't go out to bid? Where are you on the spectrum: commodity, transactional, competitive, trusted adviser? Ideally, you want to be the last category.
These are just a few metrics that be applied to assess the depth of your salespeople's relationships with clients.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Virginia Steinberg
Prashant,
While I agree with many of the answers about having systems in place to track sales metrics and doing surveys, I think the simplest and most effective way is to simply call at random to dead prospects, current prospects, and current clients and just talk to them. Ask them a favor...I do this everyday and it still amazes me what people will tell me when I just ask. I know I don't mind when a vendor approaches me about what they could do better, and what they are doing right. Most of time it strengthens a current relationship and sometimes helps me overcome objections I had to purchasing from those that I was on the fence about. So pick up the phone is my advice, sometimes technology and systems gets in the way of effective relationships.
Jason Blackburn
Founder, Laser Focus Training
The only real measure is how much you sell.
I once has a salesman working for me who had built a great relationship with several customers. He knew their families, what football team they supported, where they went on their holidays. He played golf with them regularly and talked to each contact by phone almost daily.
The only problem was, they didn't buy anything. He had to leave the company.
Conversely, I had a salesman who worked for me some years ago who spent almost no time on "relationship", he was to the point to the extent of sounding impatient - but customers understood his methods, and appreciated the quick service as he would regularly see a dozen customers a day, and speak to another dozen by phone. He worked so fast he literally carried the orders through the customers offices. By most modern measures he had poor relationship building skills but he outperformed on sales revenue for many years, until he retired.
The key is to make sure your sales team understand that relationship building is a means to an end - getting the order - and not an end in itself. Some sales "gurus" would have you believe that if you have a good relationship with the customer then business will come your way automatically. Not true. The sales team need to sell - and that is the key thing that you need to measure.
Hosting a pipeline progression event with a compelling speaker and a topic that matches your product's underlying buying driver(s) will indirectly meet the gaol. If your team has built relationships based upon these drivers you should expect a positive turnout of decision makers and influencers.
Directly extending yourself and your service to prospects, as per prior notes, is obviously the best direct way to qualify your pipeline and team's effectiveness.
Though I am not expert of this subject, I am attaching a link to a whitepaper by SAP titled "Sales Performance Management: Maximize Profits with Comprehensive Sales Processes". This whitepaper is free to subscribe for qualified professional.
Summary of this white paper:
Discover why the key to a productive sales force is ensuring that sales people concentrate on acquiring, growing, and retaining profitable relationships with their account bases.
Links:
First the best way to "measure/quantify" if sales people are building relationships with customers is: ARE THEY BUYING FROM THEM? That should tell you something. Also how often are they being invited back to see the customer? How many connections has the customer helped the sales person make in the organization? How often do they spend "after work hours" together? Relationships are earned and should be intentional. Sales people need to build plans of how they will drive to a higher value relationship with their client, but the answers to the above will certainly indicate relationship strength.
In addition, ssk your sales people the following questions:
1) Why would your client buy something? (What are their buying motives)
2) Why would they buy something now?
3) Why would they buy that something from you?
4) Why would they buy that something from you now?
Based on the indicators from the first paragrah and the answers to these questions you should have a pretty good idea whether there is a reationship or not. Perhaps a better way to spend your time is by helping sales people determine who they must have relationships with to win their business; what the personal gain for that customer is in doing business with your reps; what they are going to do to earn their customer's trust and lastly why the buyer would be loyal to them and buy. You can spend all the time you want trying to "quantify" stuff, but your time is better spent trying to make it happen!
I believe things are changing and that there are some new technologies that will give managers more insight. I am thinking about some of the business collaboration tools that allow a continuous exchange of information and dialogue between the rep and the prospect/client. I would suggest picking a collaboration tool where the rep or sales manager can define the environment so that they can include the right people in the collaboration space. Having one large company wide customer portal usually does not work for what you are talking about. The collaboration tool will also give the sales rep the ability to have a defined number of clients/prospects talking to each other.
If you define a collaboration space and a prospect or client does not use the space to exchange information it might tell you something about the relationship.
Mark H.
Deloitte Consulting
Best Answers in: Project Management (5), Sales Techniques (4), Business Development (1), Public Relations (1), Change Management (1), Product Design (1), Communication and Public Speaking (1)
Prashant
If your question focuses on existing customers, the best way I have found is the number of referrals and testimonials the customer provides when asked. There is no better indication than for one to put his or her reputation on the line, for someone else.
It will show on its own. When customers call more often and place orders. When customers refer new clients to you. I have actually had customers call my boss and tell him that he should sure appreciate what he has in the person selling his business and to be sure and give bonus>LOL this will happen when you build true relationships with your customers not fake.
Jiveshdeep Singh S.
Brand Management at Toyota Kirloskar Motor
Best Answers in: Business Development (1), Lead Generation (1)
Going from personal experience a few basic things:
1. The scope of engagement with the client
2. Awareness of the plans of the client for the future
3. Decision making process of the client
4. Proximity with the key stakeholders
5. Last but not the least, recommendations and referrals from the client
Andy C.
CEO and Chairman, International Alliance of Guardian Angels NZ Charitable Trust
Best Answers in: Organizational Development (5), Nonprofit Management (5), Corporate Governance (3), Career Management (3), Ethics (3), Mentoring (2), Government Policy (2), Criminal Law (2), Change Management (2), Philanthropy (2), Social Enterpreneurship (2), Using LinkedIn (2), Air Travel (1), Hotels (1), Education and Schools (1), Occupational Training (1), Risk Management (1), Corporate Law (1), Business Development (1), Writing and Editing (1), Business Analytics (1), Labor Relations (1), Nonprofit Fundraising (1), Project Management (1), Branding (1), Professional Networking (1), Green Products (1)
The best way to measure the quality and quantity of relationships a salesman is/isn't building is the old fashioned way:
Ask your customers.
If you can't do that, then measure sales, onsales, cross-sales, referrals. Look at his pipeline and track his sales thru the funnel: what is his hit-rate? What is his cost-of-sale? How deep is his funnel? At what point in the sales cycle is he getting involved? How much (if any) influence does he have over the evaluation criteria?
It's not magic, it's just commonsense.
Clarification added July 17, 2009:
When I say "ask your customers" I don't mean by way of survey, or even by telephone. I mean by face-to-face interview, one-on-one. Ask your customers deep and meaningful questions: if you have any relationship at all with your customers they will be delighted to give you this. If they won't, then that probably tells you all you need to know about the relationship. Don't take the salesman with you, just go by yourself, as "a part of your ongoing Quality Assurance program". Most customers enjoy helping you give them better service. You can then take the feedback to your salesmen and present it to them, both individually in detail and in private, and as a group summarized.
If you want the truth, you yourself personally must invest the face-time. It will be time well spent.
Grant E.
Senior Account Executive at USADATA, Inc
Best Answers in: Government Policy (2), Staffing and Recruiting (2), Work-life Balance (2), Using LinkedIn (2), Commercial Real Estate (1), Business Dining and Entertainment (1), Occupational Training (1), Health Care (1), Environmental Health (1), International Law (1), Corporate Law (1), Employment and Labor Law (1), Advertising (1), Viral Marketing (1), Business Analytics (1), Corporate Governance (1), Ethics (1)
One way is to have your sales consultants ask their clients for testimonials, referrals, etc. Depending on the industry, your reps are likely to have a mixture of transactional clients and long term clients. There should be at least some basis of relationship beyond the "business" even in transactional sales. People buy from people they trust and enjoy working with. People don't buy from people they dont like, period.
Gene R.
President and CEO
Best Answers in: Business Development (4), Mentoring (1), Staffing and Recruiting (1), Criminal Law (1), Employment and Labor Law (1), Manufacturing (1), Packaging and Labeling (1), Quality Management and Standards (1), Market Research and Definition (1), Ethics (1)
Shippable, billable orders.
Rahul B.
13 Yrs of Sales,Marketing,Business Development & Team Mgmt experience in Fmcg,Telecom,Banking & Financial Solutions.
Best Answers in: Career Management (1)
Hi Prashant,
A Very thought provoking question and is on our Radar , I'd suggest the following Measures:
1. Connect with your Customers once a month to check pulse and knowledge on your product/ services/offering and your organisation.
2. Pick up sales People Randomly to check if they know their customer Well.
3.check how many long term association with added revenue have been able to build over a period of time and recognise them.
4. You may also want to call over your customers and your sales Spoc and keep a kind of a game amongst others to check how much do they know of their customer's needs and personal stuff ( connect).
Regards
Rahul
Jason C.
Jason Croyle is an Analyst with MECLABS
Best Answers in: Lead Generation (11), Sales Techniques (4), Staffing and Recruiting (2), Business Development (2), Job Search (1), Advertising (1), Internet Marketing (1), Search Marketing (1), Writing and Editing (1), Project Management (1), Communication and Public Speaking (1), Small Business (1), E-Commerce (1), Telecommunications (1), Software Development (1)
In my field of lead generation for the complex sale we have to look at dozens of figures that are tracked in our CRM system ranging from talked to decision maker rates, e-mails sent, lead status updates, etc...
From my personal experience I believe the key figure for us is in how many contacts and companies we collect e-mail addresses for that opt-in to our "nurturing" database. That means they not only get calls from us but also choose to receive periodic updates via e-mail from us as well.
If someone is not clicking on the client program or with their contacts a lack of status updates and e-mails being sent is our key figure to identify their abilities. Of course this also leads to lower sales ready lead production as well.
Not every program is the same though. So we have to look at the full nine yards. It may be hard for you to implement a system where every call and contact is tracked 100% through their life cycle or sales cycle. However this is what I recommend. From there you need to determine what you'd like to see from that system and set it up so that it can not be swayed to show only positive or negative data. Make it fair for both you and the reps.
Hmmm...Good answers and interesting question. I would suggest that the first thing is to define "relationship". Does that mean revenue, renewals, or trust. I know people who are viewed as "consultants" and "relationship builders" that not a whole lot more that "professional visitors". Conversely, it's not all about revenue.
My suggestion would be to "invite" premier clients to be part of a "committee" that meet once a month or quarter to make suggestions to product and service. Hear their voice as to what is important in their terms and then train and aspire appropriately.
The key here, however, no matter how uncomfortable it may seem is to invite both happy and unhappy consumers of your product/service. Let the communicate with each other. You can either do it with you listening and learning or they will eventually do it on their own anyway. Use it or lose it.
Dan
gibbs.headhunter@gmail.com
Prashant, The simple and straight answer is sales/revenue.
When you are actually leading a team of sales people you have the simple means of gauging the effectiveness and the reason of the team. Results are the clearest and simplest factor that can gauge if your sales boys are building positive relationships in the field.
When one of your team member is working on a customer for sales, you should have got the sales order/contract signed in a certain time period depending on the type of product/service you offer.
When you don't get the desired sales from a customer find if there were any genuine reasons that the sale did not come through. (If it has gone to your competitor then you know if your sales people have built a positive relationship or not.)
In certain cases the sales could have gone to yet another competitor of yours, still the customer is willing to work with you for some other project or willing to refer you for some other business.(A feeddback form will help in this cases) So now you know for sure that your sales people have built positive relationships.
If the customer you are speaking about is an existing customer find out if you are getting repeat business and referrals. If either is not happening you know for sure that there is some negative vibrancy flowing between or rubbing on the wrong side.
To get more deep in to analysis on the simple revenue factor, you have lot of complex yet compelling tools/mechanism like sending a feedback form,survey questions, trying to jump in the sales-customer-manager loop and all this.
To top it all I would suggest that as a leader one should always remember the customer by name and contact number and you have dozens of occasion to connect with them including but not limited to Mother'sDay, Father's Day, New Year . well it can be an endless list for that matter.
The childhood lesson I learned in Trignometry is the Straight Line is always the shortest and simplest distance between any two points. Make it simple and straight-Speak to your customers.
Wish I am able to throw some insights.
Thanks and Regards,
Shankar
Normand F.
Rewarding, self-actualization, high-performance , for every team
Best Answers in: Business Development (1)
Hi Prashant,
I'm with Neil Smith on this one. Why positive relationships? Relationships don't convert to sales - something else is needed.
But, when I was VP Marketing and Sales I did learn something about relationships. They were very useful in either after-sales service, or in getting marketing info. So if you want to measure "relationships" with your sales people try these two ideas:
1) If you have an unreasonable client pounding your customer service staff, involve the sales person and see if she can leverage the relationship to smooth things. Rate the effect from 0 to 5 and keep stats over the year. Sales people with genuine relationships, in my experience, have a knack for helping out here.
2) If you're trying to decide on a marketing strategy, ask the sales people to informally gather info you need (not quite an ad-hoc focus group - but similar) by touching base with their "relationships". Count how many brought back feedback (don't rate the feedback - it is not indicative of the relationship itself).
The funny things is - you may find that your best salespeople do not score highest on these tests. That's because relationships alone don't make a sale. But having good relationship does help the business. So these two tests can give you an indication.
More Answers (2)
Aleksandr S.
Managed service and network assurance solution manager at Huawei Ukraine LTD
Best Answers in: Sales Techniques (3), Customer Service (1), Lead Generation (1), Hedge Funds (1), Project Management (1), Ethics (1)
First of all consider method of the control: is it result-oriented or process-oriented. For result-oriented control clarify why you or your company needs positive relationship of sales team with customers. I guess that it is not relationship you actually need from managers, but its result: new unique opportunities, solution of really difficult problems, information about competitors etc. So may be you should focus on these issues. If sales managers brings new sales opportunities, can solve difficult problems, and bring information about competitors, then why should you care how they do all this?
Let's suppose, that you prefer process-oriented control. You should consider 3 levels of relationships: personal level, decision-making level, enterprise level (translation from Russian).
Personal level relationship means, that sales manager has friends in customer's company. Usually you can detect it by noticing following combination of factors:
- sales manager shows not customer relationship activities (all activities are out of business time)
;
- sales manager never asks money for customer entertainment or arranges entertainment with no reason
;
- sales manager knows birthdays, tastes of customer persons, asks for special kinds of gifts.;
- sales manager knows latest news of a customer, often brings information about competitors
;
- when you ask customer about current situation (make customer satisfaction survey), the answer is "everything is normal"
;
Decision-making level relationship means that some key persons of a customer think, that the product being sold by sales manager is quite interesting. You can detect it by noticing following combination of factors:
- sales managers use CRM tools, fishbone diagrams etc
;
- sales managers visit exhibitions with customers, visiting headquarters, arrange many promotional activities etc
;
- sales managers bring many new sudden sales opportunities;
- sales managers spend much time on meetings with customer
;
- sales managers work actively in you company promoting customer requirements
;
- sales managers discuss yearly budged with customer
.
Decision-making level relationship means that customer can see strategic partner in your organization. You can detect it by noticing following combination of factors:
- Sales managers have contracts for 3 and more years, strategic business plans
;
- Sales managers use projects program management tools
;
- Sales manager asks to develop new special products for a customer
;
- Sales manager asks top managers (general director) to participate meeting with customer.;
- Sales manager brings new opportunities to company, but they are not sudden; for example you may know about some bidding called by customer 3-24 months in advance.
If you need to measure all this, you may just count quantity of activites stated above. But be careful of process-based control of customer relationship: all factors stated above are indirect. Moreover, every customer needs personal approach. For example, in order to establish good personal relationship with one person, I needed to visit him at least once in two weeks. While for other customer's person, sometimes we met only several times a year: my decision-making abilities were more valuable for him.
However, in my opinion, for sales managers (at least for successful ones) result oriented control is more preferable.
By the number of sales.
Is there another standard?
