Sharpen Your Saw

The blog posting of “You Are What We Eat” is a way to ask in a humorous manner “where are you spending your time?” As important as this question is, there is another important question to answer, “Over the long term what is your time producing.”

One of the most powerful, yet underutilized tools, in sales and marketing is tracking. By that I mean some form of measuring the success and failure of selling initiatives. In our world this practice begins and ends with measuring the number of sales calls, call backs, presentations and sales that are made. Successful selling is always driven by a systematic approach to tracking key indicators in the sales process.

Before we can begin any discussion about measuring sales indicators we have to talk a bit about setting sales targets and goals. If you are going to start tracking “what matters” you have to know “what matters”. In our business “what matters” is very basic. The number of sales alls is one thing that matters – yet we are not keeping track of this key stat as much as we should. Robert has asked for this data and it has not been forth coming.

Why?

Everyone is busy. I understand that. I do not doubt that everyone is working hard. However, hard work does no insure success. Working smart is “what matters.”

You probably have heard about the guy who while walking in the forest stopped and watched a lumberjack sawing on a big redwood tree. He watched with great interest for a half an hour as the lumberjack worked tirelessly away while sweat pours off of his body but there is hard any visible progress on falling the tree. Finally the observer suggests to the lumberjack that he might want to sharpen his saw. The lumberjack replies, “Sharpen my saw? Can’t you see I am too busy to sharpen my saw? I have this tree to cut down.”

Too often we are too busy sawing our own tree down to sharpen our saws.

Not measuring and analyzing the metrics in the sales process is the same thing as not sharpening our saws. This fatal error can lead to another type of Black Hole: The Sales Black Hole – mindless sales activity with no significant results.

Next up - the key to meaningful metrics.