The most successful businesses and certainly, sales departments have identified their Key Performance Indicators (KPI); individual gateways that directly effect the outcome of a particular process. Then they measure the competency ratios in line with them.

Have you identified the KPIs in your sales process?

A good KPI example in the sales process might be how many times you advance the first sales appointment to the next phase, whether thats a demonstration, a site visit, a survey or a proposal. Another KPI is how many times you gain a new customer once the first gateway is passed. And when you do gain a new customer, whats the average revenue you achieve? Thats certainly an important KPI. Because if your average revenue per sale is 40% less than the average peer KPI, you might want to find out why and take focused action to improve it, as youre leaving money on the table.

And what about the length of a sales cycle in days? Is that conditional or do you have a degree of control over it? If you have a team member that has an average sales cycle 30% shorter than the peer group, uncover and assimilate those best practices out to the rest of the sales team. Less time, more results. That makes Sales Cycle a valuable KPI.

On a practical level, KPIs can provide management prospect reactions to their service offering for feedback to marketing and product development, detect problem areas in sales performance and signal the need for strategic or tactical modifications even an all-out intervention through pinpoint sales performance training.

Perhaps the most overlooked KPI is the individual Magic number; how many new weekly sales opportunities must be generated based on neighboring KPIs. Think of the magic number as the fuel in your gas tank needed to get from point A to point B. Its directly proportional to how far a distance, how fast you drive and your average miles per gallon. Your sales process Magic number is a derivative of your average revenue per sale, 1st appointment to proposal ratio, closing ratio and revenue goal. Its your Activity barometer and it should be at 100%.

The following are some tips for improving several sales process KPIs.

If your current 1st Appointment to Proposal ratio is below 65%:

1. Internally define what your Next step objective of the 1st appointment is; a demo, a site visit, a survey or a proposal. Then train to a process and measure the outcome.
2. Decide to start at the Top with the fiscal authority that can Call the shots.
3. Avoid Selling your product on the 1st appointment. Instead, outline your diagnostic steps to evaluate the fit between your solutions parallel to their business objectives.

If your current Closing ratio is below 65%:

1. Ask pertinent questions to what the Prospect Companys decision-making process is, what the internal criteria for change is and what players need to be involved for evaluation.
2. Communicate a timeline and set a specific date for the 2nd appointment before leaving the 1st appointment. Encourage that all management players be present at the next appointment.
3. Catalog risk factors for each management player and develop strategies, tactics, and tools for direct communication to them.
4. Have relevant industry and title reference letters available for Real-time credibility.

If your current Activity barometer is below 100%:

1. Announce the Competency of converting conversations to appointments as a Key performance Indicator for sales success.
2. Define an appointment setting training objective and set a realistic goal.
3. Develop a training process in line with prospecting scenarios and best practice communications.
4. Dont sell your Widget; sell the Business reason to meet.
5. Partner with technology to transfer best prospecting practices into Intellectual capital promotion throughout your sales society.

Ultimately, sales trainers and management should work in concert to create a new culture by replacing random sales routines with specific KPI competency training.

Targeted and timely KPI training can make a critical difference to your monthly revenue scorecard. In todays high sales performance culture migrate away from monthly and quarterly Quota focus to daily routines and weekly goals. The opportunity rests squarely on switching paradigms from the required End result to the necessary steps (KPIs) to get there routinely. Then build supporting tools for learning and application.

And dont forget your Magic Number.

Jeff Hardesty

Jeff Hardesty is President of JDH Group, Inc. and Developer of the X2 Sales System?.

Jeff?s first career encompassed 14-years was as a professional Pilot, where he accumulated over 7500 incident free hours of logged flight time. As the industry evolved to hold more rated Pilots than there were seats available, Jeff decided to change directions to gain more career control.

That led him into the profession of sales. Starting from the Ground floor as an outside sales rep at Lanier, Jeff rose to the top 8% in World-wide ranking, competing with 4500 other reps. He was awarded consecutive President?s Club Trip?s and was one of ten qualified national Lanier reps to win the prestigious Silver Bullet Award for outstanding major account sales.

A move into the newly emerging competitive telecommunications industry enabled Jeff to take his successful processes and best practices into a Sales leadership role. As General Manger of Sales for CGB, Inc., a start-up competing directly against the traditional Local Exchange Carrier, Jeff?s sales models and support tools helped increased revenues 509% in 3 years.

As a Vice President of Sales for a series of ?Start-up? and ?Turn-a-round? initiatives, Jeff?s diagnostic and performance-driven approach to successful sales focused on the individual sales employee and teaching them how to effectively run their own business.

His sales performance model resulted in an average of 172% sales unit growth over the first year of implementation for 3 consecutive companies.

In 2004, after 2 years of development, Jeff rolled out the X2 Sales System?, a blended sales performance system focused on identifying key sales competencies and performance metrics while training to an effective conversion rate for ?Top-Down? business appointments.

Jeff has been featured in numerous National publications such as Business First, Dartnell?s SELL!NG , Chief Learning Officer and Training Magazine with reference to Blended Learning Systems and improving sales teams Key Performance Indicators.

He travels the country conducting live X2 Appointment setting ?Boot Camps? and Train-the-trainer sessions helping sales organizations get more reps to Quota in less time, shorten new-hire ?Ramp-to-Quota?, accelerate new product roll-outs and eliminate Turnover costs due to low sales activity.