Comments on: The Business of Numbers http://www.danmartell.com/the-business-of-numbers/ Strategies for Fast Growth Entrepreneurs Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:46:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Darren Cunningham http://www.danmartell.com/the-business-of-numbers/#comment-3 Darren Cunningham Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:25:16 +0000 http://www.danmartell.com/?p=100#comment-3 Good post Dan. I like this line in particular: "If you don’t keep the important numbers front and center, then you’re probably spending time on activities that are low value add (i.e., aren’t moving the needle)." Having metrics that you run the business by has never been more critical, but the key is to have the right metrics. This is where Business Intelligence vendors need to focus. It's no longer enough to provide tools that can provide answers. Organizations need to know what questions to ask and what metrics to measure, monitor and easily benchmark and compare over time. Here's a presentation I delivered recently to a Salesforce.com user group called Do You have the Metrics that Matter? http://www.lucidera.com/blog/index.php/2008/11/13/sales-metrics-matter/ Sales managers often "don't know what they don't know" about the health of their pipeline and they risk facing unwanted sales surprises at the end of each quarter. Here are some of the questions and associated metrics sales managers need to be able to answer: - What are your top and bottom performing vertical markets by account? - How is your sales pipeline split by new vs. repeat customers? - What’s the likelihood to close based on new vs. repeat win-rate? - How do your sales reps and regions compare on key metrics such as average deal size? - Do you have deals in later stages but not forecasted and deals in earlier stages expected to close soon? What % of pipeline are these? - Which sales reps are most effective competing against your top competitors? - Which deals are likely stuck in your pipeline? Which lead sources are generating the most pipeline and what is the quality of that pipeline? Good post Dan. I like this line in particular: “If you don’t keep the important numbers front and center, then you’re probably spending time on activities that are low value add (i.e., aren’t moving the needle).”

Having metrics that you run the business by has never been more critical, but the key is to have the right metrics. This is where Business Intelligence vendors need to focus. It’s no longer enough to provide tools that can provide answers. Organizations need to know what questions to ask and what metrics to measure, monitor and easily benchmark and compare over time. Here’s a presentation I delivered recently to a Salesforce.com user group called Do You have the Metrics that Matter?

http://www.lucidera.com/blog/index.php/2008/11/13/sales-metrics-matter/

Sales managers often “don’t know what they don’t know” about the health of their pipeline and they risk facing unwanted sales surprises at the end of each quarter. Here are some of the questions and associated metrics sales managers need to be able to answer:
- What are your top and bottom performing vertical markets by account?
- How is your sales pipeline split by new vs. repeat customers?
- What’s the likelihood to close based on new vs. repeat win-rate?
- How do your sales reps and regions compare on key metrics such as average deal size?
- Do you have deals in later stages but not forecasted and deals in earlier stages expected to close soon? What % of pipeline are these?
- Which sales reps are most effective competing against your top competitors?
- Which deals are likely stuck in your pipeline? Which lead sources are generating the most pipeline and what is the quality of that pipeline?

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