“In an ecology, the ‘whole” has to be seen and understood and the ‘parts’ exist only in contemplation of the whole.” — Peter Drucker
When traveling for my consulting business, too often, I see financial firms still using the standard measurement of volume and units to evaluate results. This approach may have been fine 20 years ago, but it is not effective now. Volume and units are short-term measurements which is like looking at a daily stock price of a company which doesn’t really tell you the company’s value and long-term prospects.
Granted, volume and units are easy to deal with but the truth is that calculating profitability is more involved than merely looking at volume. Any sales process approach should be rooted in data to provide the context, in which a sales force gets information, discusses problems, makes their decisions and takes action. Any data collection should be anchored on understanding the parts of the process and how they interact. Parts of the process can be simplified into activities that the sales people perform and the decisions they make and the actions that the customer takes or declines to take.