Moving from a Culture of Accountability to a Culture of Predictability
This past week I moderated the Forecasting, Analytics and Compensation Management Panel at the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco (good event by the way – probably the best one yet!). My diverse panel included sales execs from ArcSight, LaCrosse Footwear, and GuardianEdge who deployed Sales 2.0-powered sales management solutions from Xactly, Right 90 and Cloud 9 Analytics, respectively.
Given my marketing analytics background (or DNA as some might say 
), I’ve always been focused on making marketing more accountable to and aligned with sales. My personal edict is “You Cannot Improve What You Cannot Measure”, and I practice it religiously to ensure my clients drive the most revenue possible with their marketing dollars, great or small. What was thrilling about my pre-conference conversations with the panelists was how the Sales 2.0 movement is enabling sales organizations to adopt a similar culture of measurement, bringing in much needed accountability. Actually according to my panel, it is moving beyond accountability – and shifting sales into a culture of predictability. Here is how: Sales management solutions, such as forecasting, business analytics and compensation management tools, improve visibility into sales performance with objective, dynamic data. Better visibility in turn exposes volatility at the aggregate level as well as gives us the ability to drill down to pinpoint and act on the problem areas – whether product line, geo, sales rep, lead source – resulting in overall sales performance predictability.
Think about it:
- Business Analytics improve visibility into the pipeline. With just a couple of clicks, we can see what deals are won, lost, closed, or added to your pipeline, even deals that slipped. Better pipeline analytics help drive a better forecast and also help alignment with marketing re: driving the appropriate lead gen efforts to mitigate potential shortfalls.
- Accurate sales forecasting, based on dynamic sales data, can build trust in the forecast for run-rate business as well as new demand, ensuring alignment with production – getting us a step closer to achieving the dual goals of improved profitability and customer sat.
- Smart compensation management can help us incent sales people to drive sales of the “right” products (and you got it, we get to define what “right” means!). We can now adapt compensation plans to match changing market conditions to better align sales comp to business objectives.
Uncovering volatility and bringing about predictability into sales performance have far reaching benefits. It of course helps with the all important revenue numbers – but also drives organizational alignment between sales and finance, sales and marketing, sales and product management, sales and production… (yep, you get the picture) and improves trust between these often mistrusting departments. Most importantly, it translates into customer value in the form of a more efficient and customer-centric organization. And, to quote a popular MasterCard ad, “that’s priceless!”
Filed under: marketing analytics, sales analytics | Tags: alignment, analytics, compensation management, forecasting, marketing, sales, sales 2.0
Pelin, thanks for the post – it’s a wonderful, concise summary of the session. What was also interesting to me was the explanation of the difference between “pipeline” and “sales forecast” given by a session attendee. Pipeline is your new business, and focuses on design wins, and what will be sold. Sales forecasts focus on new business and run rate business at the product level so companies can tell what quantities of what product to build for each customer around the world. I thought the attendee’s explanation was great, as was your moderation. Thanks for a valuable session.
Pelin,
Thanks the the great post and panel discussion and for bringing such passion as well as expertise to this important topic! In my opinion, having a measurement and analytics mindset in sales is one of the most important aspects of Sales 2.0. As we covered in the lively discussion at the conference, sales is, of course, a combination of science and art. Do you agree that perhaps the biggest sales management opportunity for companies now is bringing”science”, as you describe (enabled by a wide selection of tools and technology available today)to the already-well-established “art” of connecting with people?
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