Following up on last week\’s topic is another issue that I find difficult to undertstand and see constantly when we are in the field with sales teams—is the failure of companies to develop and use sales benchmarking techniques and to actually make decisions from the data they have. Managers many times ignore the data and explain their decisions that sales is an art and not a science.
This thinking of sales as art and not a science does not make sense to me today. Often times, the comment is that you can\’t measure sales as if it is an art form and not a series of measureable steps. Hello–if baseball\’s Billy Beane can measure the performance statistics that translate into wins and losses–I think sales can be evaluated and leaders can make a commitment to viewing sales in a consistent and quantitative way.
More next time on things that should be evaluated. Can you believe Phillies pitchers and catchers start play in 9 days! Like to hear your comments. Pat