Here it is the beginning of March and time for me to figure out our Red, Yellow & Green dashboard relative to where we expected to be in the quarter. Right now, it looks like...
- Revenue: Green
- New Customers: Yellow
- Existing customer growth: Green
- Partner referrals: Red
- Profitability: Green
- Boot Camp Announcement: Green (Oct 6th-8th)
So, overall, not a bad start to the year. Not quite where I wanted to be, but we still have all of March to bring these it across the finish line.
No matter what the company, all of us live in an increasingly intertwined world of sales and marketing. Since as far as I'm concerned, "Relationship Selling" as a sales process has been relegated to the trash bin of "Duh!", "Of course" and "So what?", then today's much more complex sales processes and detailed metrics require easy-to-visualize, simple-to-understand dashboards. Take a quick look. Make a decision. Work through a course correction.
One of our most successful customers has over 100 marketing metrics that they constantly measure pretty much in real time. Having said that, every member of the marketing team has a HubSpot dashboard that posts, in summary format, only four of their most critical metrics with MQOs being that single metric that defines the ultimate success of their department and the overall pace of their sales organization. Four metrics, three colors-simple to visualize in a snapshot, and equally simple to drive attention deeper on the yellows and deeper still on the reds. Although the solutions to the yellows and the reds may be complex, at least everyone's attention is focused on optimizing lead gen and enabling the salesforce to higher productivity.
Most of the board meetings of my better companies begin with a Green-Yellow-Red dashboard. In a time-crunched environment, with too many items on the agenda and typically too many egos in the room, the simplicity of the CEO providing their own summary overview of the company's performance for the quarter is a great way to focus the content and discussion for the meeting.
So, here we are at the beginning of March. Think about taking an hour this weekend to create your own personal dashboard of how you're doing right now at the beginning of March.
- Personal quota achievement
- Team quota achievement
- Skills development plan for 2013
- Customer travel
- New customers
- Existing customer growth
...and so on.
Welcome to 2013...and Good Selling!
-January was a real solid month, February was pretty good, March will be excellent!
-Remember: Q1 always sets the tone, pace & success for the year
Jack,
Head Coach
Save The Date
We just decided yesterday to hold another one of our always sold-out Sales Management Boot Camps in Boston from the late afternoon of October 6th through mid afternoon on October 8th. Limited to 30 senior sales managers and presidents. Highly interactive. Tools and case study-driven. And, most importantly, a perfect opportunity to get whipped into shape just at that time of year when you're focused on both closing the year and planning out your sales plans, budgets and strategies for 2014.
We'll be sending out details over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime... Save The Date
