With the start of the new year approaching fast, many companies are focused on planning and agreeing on their sales and marketing strategies for 2016.
Planning for a new year often entails:
- Re-allocation of resources to handle the launch of new products
- New personnel coming on board (or old ones leaving)
- Re-allocation of territories
- Splitting of budgets to ensure they reflect the size and customer base in your new territory
- A comprehensive analysis of year on year performance
In addition, here are some things you may want to consider based on the area of responsibility and position of your staff.
Sales Managers and Sales Consultants
- How does individual profitability compare with their peers?
- How did they perform this year vs last year?
- Compare the range of products and services they sold with their peers
- How much money did they make for the business, or did they just sell the low hanging fruit?
- Did they maximise their opportunities to cross and upsell?
- Are they selling the same products to the same customers year in, year out?
- What new products did they sell this year compared with the previous year?
- What new accounts did they open this year?
- Are there opportunities for Managers to train their staff better?
- How can Managers help staff make more sales to a particular industry, business size or segment?
Customers
- Which of your customers are buying your most profitable products and services?
- Which of your customers are not buying products or services from you that they logically should be buying?
- Are your Sales Consultants selling more or less to existing customers and why?
Products & Inventory
- Which of your products (or ranges) were most profitable last year?
- How would withdrawing your least profitable products impact on overall business profitability?
- How much dead stock are you carrying?
- Is your inventory aligned with the sales force targets
Note: When aligning inventory with a sales forecast, bear in mind that any forecast based on current year sales should take in to account unfilled orders
Opportunities
- Link sales
- Up-sales
- No sales (e.g. customer has stopped buying a particular item or range)
Many companies will be relying on reports from their ERP system and complex Excel spreadsheets (which may contain bugs no one really knows about) to help them analyse data. Some companies will just work on gut feel because it is all just too hard!
It should not have to be this way. Easy to use sales analytics tools are available today that can actually be used by sales people who are not techies! No more pouring over reports, mucking around with spreadsheets, and no more headaches!
Analytics 
Financial Statements 
Budgets & Forecasts 
Rebates 
CRM 
