| Sales Cycle for Wins
Sales Cycle for Wins is one of the most popular – and powerful – tools in Decipher. With it a sales manager or executive can quickly see what the Sales Cycle is, and what is happening to it. Drilling into Sales Cycle for Wins shows a Quarterly view, where visible trends such as the lengthening of the cycle and the cause for the sales process length. As shown at right, specifically the Qualify step is lengthening. The Wins cycle has increased by about 5 days the past 4 quarters, yet the Qualify stage has increased by 7 days over the same period.
Sales Cycle for Losses
Comparing Sales Cycle for Wins to Sales Cycle for Losses can reveal very important insights about your sales priorities and problems. Often a troubling sign: Sales Losses taking longer than Sales Wins (in the example at right, it is 2/3 longer than the Win Cycle above). For your Sales Cycle do you know how much longer Losses take than Wins? And whether it is getting worse, staying the same or getting better?
Drilling further into Sales Cycle reveals, in this example, the main culprit for the length of the losing sales cycle: the significant increase in the Qualify stage and also in the Implemenation stage.
Comparing it to the Sales Cycle for Wins chart (above) shows that Sales Losses spend on average much longer – about 2 ½ times -- in the first stage than does the typical Sales Win. With this insight, you can set up and test rules of thumb to govern pipeline management: any opportunities aged to a certain threshold old, say 45 days, and any opportunity that is stuck more than, say, 15 days as “Qualified” should be reviewed to determine if they are worth continued pursuit.
Average Age by Stage
An additional way to look at the Sales Cycle is by individual stage and comparing it against other stages and across time. This can reveal very important insights about your sales process. For example, in the Wins category some stages may have changed significantly in a positive fashion, such as the Value Proposition stage -- which in the top right chart has gotten markedly shorter over time.
Others stages have changed in a negative direction, such as Negotiation stage in Sales Losses chart (at right, below). As a sales management executive you need to understand "are these expected or unexpected changes"? The answers reveal where the sales process, the effectiveness of sales training or your team's sales priorities need attention.
Lead Responsiveness for Wins and Losses
When does a lead go cold? How does contact efficiency impact qualification and close rates? The handoff between sales and marketing may be more important than ever before. Timeliness of lead routing may be the most important factor for success. For example, failing to follow up on web inquiries (rather than waiting 24 hours!) may be hurting your chances of making a contact that turns into a sale. The speed of first attempt (“time to first dial”) to a newly generated lead correlates with a significant increase in the number of qualified leads.
Lead generation is an investment for a company. It takes time and effort to gather or create leads, not to mention money. Thousands of dollars may be spent on Marketing, SEO, and purchasing. Each lead is a potential conversion, but lead generation can become an organizational nightmare and a wasted investment if leads are not followed-up on time.
Lead Responsiveness by Reps
Do you know which reps are more efficient in contacting newly generated leads? Does their efficiency correlates with sales results? Decipher provides the insights needed to improve lead response which in turn increases qualified leads and sales results for each rep.
Open Activities by Priority
Too often in sales, the only feedback given to salespeople ties to their results. Certainly, results are important, and they are ultimately the measurement of achievement. Unfortunately, results are not something that can be managed proactively. Results are history – they have already happened. Activity is what is happening -- or indicates what is about to happen! Clearly, activity is the most manageable part of the sales process. And monitoring the trend of open activities and prioritizing them effectively drives sales success.
Activities Overdue
Sales activities drive sales results and if activities are not performed on time then you end up losing business. Decipher provides comprehensive views of all overdue activities in one place so you can act on those first and improve your chances of success.
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