Sherlock Tomes, back on the case with tomes of writings for your glossary of sales team optimisation definitions.  After last month’s installment, one punter asked me the difference between sales team optimisation and sales optimisation.  Good question.   Well not all sales organisations possess a sales team to execute their sales function and process.  Think about […]

As a disciple of the church of sales science…………I have to confess that I am as guilty as that other one over there for using jargon when communicating on my topic of great passion……….. sales team productivity and return on investment (see…….I told you so!).  I would like to boast that I created all the […]

Last post, we lingered on the two broad types  of tier 1 +/- tier 2 customer visits/contacts.  Proactive and responsive visits/contacts.  First focusing on responsive…when the customer initiates contact of a welcome nature, eg a business opportunity.  Here is the rule of thumb.  If the request is a one-off and ad hoc nature, and cannot […]

In the previous two instalments of this post, I prosecuted the importance of visit:drive time ratio for the on-the-road B2B sales team (sales team productivity)…with initial specific focus on the drive time denominator (click here to read the first post in this series), then turning focus to the numerator … visit time (click here to […]

Last week we prosecuted the importance of visit:drive time ratio for the on-the-road B2B sales team…with specific focus on the drive time denominator.  In fact I put out there for your consideration, 8 quick steps to calculate your sales rep/territory managers drive time between customers/prospects (sales team productivity).  Now to the numerator … visit time. […]

For territory based sales reps, visit : drive time ratio SHOULD be a critical kpi and sales team productivity focus.  Sadly, very few B2B sale organisations measure it.  As our cities get bigger and bigger, and our roads get more and more clogged, this metric should be closely monitored for territory mapping and itinerary journey […]

Last post I argued that optimum B2B sales management system development includes setting visit activity rates as a benchmark, not a target. In other words, a level modest enough to be meaningful, but sets a minimum standard that must be achieved…not an upper end target.  I then argued that in the same sense, the visit […]

The B2B sales organisation world is still roughly equally divided…those that measure their reps against a visit activity rate target…those that don’t. The pro’s… Focusses rep activity onto visiting to a specific numeric level “what gets measured gets done” culture Facilitates cross-team competitiveness , driving up this vital activity The con’s … A form of […]

Been thinking about your internal meaty sales process discussions around the setting of contact frequency for customers when you  annually classify them using new CV – pv <current value; potential value> data?  Our standard starting point  for players within the mature B2B supplier type industry would be… Tier 1 = F2F monthly Tier 2= F2F […]