Last week I completed my exhortations on your PV data pursuit.  Now onto the third critical tranche of data you need to collect to run your annual sales team optimisation – “CoV” (Cost of Visit).  Remember from instalment number 1 in this series…

• cost of sales/cost to serve/cost of visit/cost of minimum level face to face account management…this needs to include all of the costs to fully mobilise the sales team being optimised, plus first level sales management costs, plus the appropriate proportion of any other internal team/department who directly serve the customer base relevant to the sales team being optimised

Compared to CV and PV, CoV data collection is usually easier, and uniformly derived from internal sources.  All the elements can be sourced from internal accounting sources.  Basic principles need to be followed, customised, and then the collection is generally straight forward.  The principles to be honoured in your customisation include…

• Allocate all direct costs to support sales people managing  customer base
• Add in all costs related to Sales support
  • Cost to company of sales person paid and fully equipped
  • Sales management of these sales staff
  • Internal sales/telesales that support the same customer base relevant to sales team
• Add in all costs related to Service support that support the same customer base relevant to sales team
  • Customer Service/Call centre
  • Quotation processing
  • Technical support
  • Any other functionary that directly serves same customer base

Now, simply crunch the numbers to cost…

• Cost of a visit
• Cost of minimum level account management <minimum number of visits for lowest class of customer to be allocated to the sales team>

Come back next week to see how to build your gather your competitor landscape and position-in-market data as the next integral part of running your annual sales team optimisation .