"There's only one single source of the truth"

Sales Stats

With the first six months of the sales year behind us, the Big Scoreboard in the boss's office says it all:  

• $ quota plan/actual
• $ revenue plan/actual
• % GM plan/actual

No matter what other sub-stats you may measure in terms of subscriptions, MRR, ACV, accounts visited, new/existing accounts and a myriad of other metrics, by and large, these top three are the ones that most companies care about and go into the books as the door to the first half of the year closes abruptly behind us.  Good or bad, the results are the results.  What you now need to do is take the time with the rest of your team to analyze the stats and translate them from "Lessons Learned from H1" into "Plans Developed for H2" 

Hopefully, during July and August, you're gathering your troops together whether your title is "president" or "district manager" and going through not only a look back at the last six months, but, more importantly, what you're going to do to put more points on the board between September and December.  July's almost finished and August's going to be a wash caught between the waves of vacations, so this is the perfect time of year to sit back and review your stats:

• What specific activities led to the majority of your Closes?
• What was the cycle and velocity of Opportunities to Closes?
• When deals got hung up; what did or did not take place?
• What was the importance of F2F meetings, or not?
• What Social Selling activities produced the most leads?

...and whatever other activity stats you and the rest of the team used during the month to stay on course.   

You have no ability to control "Results"; all you can control is "Activities"

...and the only way to plan Activities is to analytically and objectively assess your stats. Since stats don't lie, and they are the single source of the truth, you then need to define which activities and which tools worked and which didn't as you made the six month journey down your January through June funnel.  Then you "simply" plan your activities accordingly for August through December remembering, of course, there's not much that's going to happen in August.  

Personal Stats 

For me personally, July means six months since my successful open heart surgery.  

"Terrific" is my new word for 2015.  Feeling great, no after effects, no more drugs, and in the gym every day getting ready for snowboarding this winter.

The day before the operation, I asked the head of cardiac surgery if he had any more advice, and he answered "Relax, you will find this whole process "interesting".  Since that word has many connotations for all of us, depending on the situation, I felt a little cheated and asked him, "Is that it?  Interesting?"  The bottom line out of all of this over the last six months was that, in fact, I did find it an interesting experience, including the stats that go along with heart disease.

To start with, I watch my diet. I'm not overweight.  My cholesterol  is "in the range".  I exercise every day. Don't smoke, and didn't have any symptoms.  No chest pain, no numbing in my left (or is it right?) arm...just a bit of shortness of breath, which I (mistakingly) "cured" over the last couple of years with an inhaler in every suit pocket, in my car and in my computer bag.  In fact when I discovered that I had major heart disease, it was only as the result of my being told I needed to do a stress test for a totally unrelated matter.  In reality, as my cardiologist told me, I was "one snowboard ride away from a massive heart attack".

The heart disease stats go like this:

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women.
• More than half of the deaths due to heart disease are in men.
  
• More women die from heart disease than from all cancers combined
• About 610,000 Americans die from heart disease each year- that’s 1 in every 4 deaths.
  
• Coronary heart disease is the most common type of heart disease, killing more than 370,000 people annually.
  
• In the U.S. someone has a heart attack every 43 seconds.
• Each minute, someone in the United States dies from a heart disease-related event.
• Coronary heart disease alone costs the United States $108.9 billion each year.

I guess that I knew some of these, but I never paid any attention, since as far as I was concerned, heart disease always related to "the other guy" since the one stat that I was following (cholesterol levels) told me that I didn't have an issue. The problem was that I was only paying attention to that one stat-cholesterol-and if I had been reviewing others, and taken the time to figure out why I had suddenly acquired "asthma" a few years ago, it would have definitively told me that something else was going on.  The single source of the truth, which started wiht a simple 20 minute stress test and a follow-up angiogram showed that there was never any asthma, just a 100% blocked left artery and a 60% blocked right artery.

Bottom line, whether you're a salesperson or not...

• Take a hard look at the ytd six month stats for your business
• Question everything. Just ask... "What does this mean?" , and "Why does this occur?"
• Plan your next five selling months around stats and detailed activities that relate to those stats
• It's as simple and as disciplined as that

Stats count.

And, while you're thinking about all of this, dial your doc and schedule a stress test.  What do you have to lose?   What you have to gain is your life.

Good Selling...and Good Health!

Have specific sales questions that you want to bounce off me or any of our other coaches, just email me, and we'll set up a time to talk.