Data insight showing the impact of getting the concentration of focus right.

1. Sales management used to be seen as being driven by judgement, opinion and
instinct. The clear trend is towards data-led sales management.
Saleslevers recently (Autumn 2020) commissioned research from Glasgow
Caledonian University’s Department of Computing to analyse 121,465 sales visits and
explore the correlation between the concentration of effort and the sales result. The
data was gathered using i-snaphot, a sales automation app.
The thinking behind this was based on Saleslevers’ ACE model which focuses on
three levers of sales success:
Activity: Are salespeople doing enough?
Concentration of effort: … of the right things with the right people?
Effectiveness: … in the right way?
Right contact
The research compared the conversion ratios achieved when salespeople visited
Directors compared with Branch Managers. The visits to BMs achieved 27% conversion
ratio but visits at director level achieved 56%.
When the conversion ratio for higher value sales were examined, there was an even
clearer divergence: 10% for BMs v 35% for Directors.
Yet sales people made twice as many visits to branch managers as to directors (14,219
v 29,807)
This data does not tell us why this is happening but it does provoke some very clear
and defined questions and does indicate that a changed concentration of effort
would generate a significant return.
Right products
When salespeople concentrated on product A they achieved a conversion ratio of 7%.
When they focused on Product B they achieved a 59% conversion ratio. This means
that it takes 2 visits to sell product B but 14 visits to sell Product A. Can the difference
be justified? What could be done to improve the conversion ratio on Product A.
Right purpose
Salespeople asked to record the purpose of their calls. A Territory call was defined as
a call with no pre-set agenda. Territory calls generated a 23% conversion.
When there was a definite goal of a prebooked full demonstration, the conversion
ratio improved to 68%.
This does not mean that all territory calls should be stopped but 77% of these calls
did not directly generate a sale. In this instance there were 16670 territory calls a year.
At an average cost per sales visit of £120 that’s over £2Mn a year spent on territory calls.
Right customer
Are you selling to the right customers? Segmenting your customers is critically
important and almost certainly needs doing again in the light of COVID. You are
looking for the correlation between two numbers: the Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
and The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). The received wisdom (e.g. David Skok
of Matrix Partners quoted in John Warrilow’s The Automatic Customer p129) is that
the LTV needs to be 3 times greater than the CAC. In a separate Saleslevers analysis
of two different sales relationships, the contrast was remarkable. Client A’s LTV
was £260,000 but the CAC was £110,000 (i.e. 2.4:1) but client B’s LTV was £1,830,000
with a CAC of £185,000 – a ratio of 9.9:1. Identifying and concentrating on the right
customers is a critical success factor for profitable selling.
End note
This data gives a clear indication of where and how to improve the sales result. If
a company does not have this sort of data available it is firing very expensive
ammunition into the dark.
Many companies rely instead on the salesperson’s impression of how the visit went.
But this may not be an accurate guide!
In the GCU research, salespeople were asked their view of whether the sales call had
gone well, badly or “no comment”. The calls perceived as positive saw a conversion
ratio of 27%. Those that were not perceived as positive achieved a 20% conversion.
So opinion will give you some indication of effectiveness but when you compare
what opinion tells you and what data tells you, then data based decision making is
clearly more effective than opinion-based decision making.
Sales data insight: 121,465 sales calls analysed
At SalesLevers we have the
capability and capacity to
help you diagnose the current
situation, formulate ways to
sell out of recovery, develop
people with the short term
skills they need for the months
ahead, reinforce the changes
with sales enablement tools
and strong implementation
techniques and finally, as your
business and your customers
emerge from the recovery
phase we can help you re-
calibrate for a changing future.
For more on this speak to
Richard Higham on +44 7712
588757 or email at richard.
higham@saleslevers.com
Concentration of effort:
The right contact
The right product
The right purpose
The right customer