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.
