Sales Leaders do not just get to where they are by accident. Along with the CEO and other senior executives, you have the vital role of being a primary decision-maker within your organization. It is a tall order. To hold this position, you must have paid your dues and continue producing strategies to increase your teams’ revenue and success while keeping them motivated. In this blog, we will look at how Leading Indicators are revolutionary for Sales Leaders and why.
You Are the Sales Expert
Leading a sales team certainly has its rewards, but like any role with responsibilities, it often comes with its set of considerable frustrations. One significant frustration is missing deals that you know your team should have won or, perhaps learning that opportunities have slipped through their hands because the customer was not approached in the proper way. Not to mention the stress that may come from a decrease in revenue when you know there is so much untapped sales potential and market share just waiting to be cornered.
You are the expert. You have honed your skills. You are also familiar with your industry, your competitors, and have a unique set of tools and wisdom to help drive your team to success. However, if you do not have the tools to provide accurate and targeted insight into your team’s activities, you will miss the opportunity to guide them, causing even more frustration when the numbers come in after the quarter ends – and the ship has already sailed.
As a Sales Leader, you know how to use KPIs to track your sales team’s progress and the company’s strategic growth. There is no doubt that these types of tools can help you project, learn from your wins and losses, and sell better over the long run. But they cannot supply information for you in your present workflow – when decision-making is optimal and will help your team change course, avoid losses, and gain profitability.
Enter a revolutionary metric for the Sales Leader for a more desirable, and profitable, outcome. Let’s talk about a new way of approaching sales indicators and strengthening your role as a Sales Leader using Leading Indicators in a revolutionary way.
What Are Leading Indicators?
Leading Indicators are a game-changer for Sales Leaders. In a nutshell, they are “a measure of the quantity and quality of daily activities required to bring in new opportunities, facilitate current ones to close, and affect sales outcomes before the reports come out.”
According to Maximizer, choosing to incorporate and deploy Leading Indicators into their newly launched Sales Leader Edition emerged from years devoted to speaking with, and listening to, Sales Leaders, strategists, and technologists around the world to pinpoint what can now be perceived as a gap in the CRM world.
Iain Black, President and CEO of the award-winning CRM company – Maximizer talks about Leading Indicators
Leading Indicators are a game-changer for Sales Leaders. In a nutshell, they are “a measure of the quantity and quality of daily activities required to bring in new opportunities, facilitate current ones to close, and affect sales outcomes before the reports come out.”
What is The Focus of “Leading Indicators” and How Do They Fill the Gap?
Leading Indicators focus on what the sales reps are doing, indicating the direction sales are headed, as opposed to what are called “lagging indicators.” Lagging indicators are those metrics that focus on past actions and efforts: what your team has done in the past to increase the sales volume in your pipeline and to close deals.
Leading Indicators are about the future! They are the key to seeing what potential is developing and allow you the opportunity to begin honing consistent behaviours with your team as you work with accurate, real-time, sales forecasting. They track not only what the team is doing, but also indicate to you what they will be doing moving ahead.
Incorporating technology that highlights your sales team’s particular leading indicators fills in the significant gap of missing information that is crucial for effective performance evaluation, coaching, and decision-making. Access to these metrics is a fix for the missing data blind-spot. A precise mechanism to capture this data will equip and empower you in an immediate way with information about the most important aspects of what is driving, or NOT driving, sales. The people doing the selling!
What Types of Leading Indicators Are Used?
Activity Metrics – Tracks the precise activities that your sales reps are engaging in and completing and at what frequency. This allows the Sales Leader to adjust what they are doing, what they could, or should, be doing – and how often.
Conversion Metrics – A clear and real-time view of your sales funnel allowing you and your team to watch your sales process. A great motivator as well as a tool for clear insight into where some sales opportunities are getting stuck and may require some help to move them forward.
Outcome Metrics – These are a combination of Activity Metrics, Conversion Metrics, and more. When customized for your process, they will show you which activities are working best in your workflow and sales process to get you the desired results.
These metrics will also indicate what actions are not working so you can consider intervening with a new strategy. For example: changing the follow-up speed, slowing down the sales cycle, or taking whatever action is required given the needs of your industry, company, and the unique set of metrics that you will have tailored to maximize your sales process.
Deciding Which Metrics Are Best
Deciding which metrics could, or should, be used to measure your team’s activities requires a thoughtful review of your current work processes with your colleagues and your team.
We say, keep it simple. Ask the questions – What activities are most relevant? What activities are most achievable? What in our data tells a story and charts a course? Also consider choosing activities that when tracked, are a source of motivation for everyone on your team!
Why Consider Maximizer for Sales Leaders?
Maximizer has been on the cutting edge for decades. And, it remains an excellent choice for your business if you want technology that sticks.
Remember, learning about your team’s performance and activities after the fact can be helpful moving forward, but it can’t help you in the present when your decisions matter most. If you’re working to get your team back on track because they have drifted off-course, or striving to raise your already successful team to become even more stellar; Maximizer Sales Leader Edition is the answer.
Maximizer’s Sales Leader Editions’ true value lies in its capability of tracking every action as it happens, giving you the opportunity to consider what next right action is necessary to move deals down the pipeline, and secure customer relationships — and that is revolutionary!
Why Choose Cencomp?
Whether or not you are proficient with using CRM, you are the expert in your sales field and know the value of your process.
We are experts in the CRM field and know how to apply it to enhance and revolutionize your process! Cencomp has been partnered with Maximizer for over 25 years and has witnessed its evolution into an award-winning CRM solution. We are excited about the release of this new Sales Leader Edition and look forward to helping you and your team achieve your potential.
Contact us to find out more about this exciting new addition to the Maximizer line-up and for your free demo.
