 There are four necessary elements to
any benchmarking effort. They enable you
to define, measure, and attain sales excellence.
Element
#1: Taxonomy
- Defines all data inputs, metric formulas rendered from these inputs, and sales
processes into which these metrics are grouped
- Differentiates
between process-specific and strategic sales benchmarking
- Incorporates
features that allow an external sales classification scheme to take root inside
the organization
Element
#2: Repository
Even though decision-makers now have more raw
sales data at their fingertips than ever, such raw data is not a sales
benchmarking repository. These repositories are maintained by 3rd parties in databases that are robust, extensive, layered, archival, verifiable, and integrated. A sales benchmarking repository should demonstrate wide variety in:
- Industry segment
- Geography
- Sales Channel
- Sales Force size
- Business model
Element
#3: Automation Technology
Self-service
software helps individual organizations: - Collect, store, analyze, transform, and
export sales benchmarking data
- Select peer groups, calculate metrics, and conduct ‘what if’ analyses
- Generate graphical expressions of benchmarking results
- Support periodic
benchmarking comparison updates
Element
#4: Analysts
Benchmarking subject matter experts
(or ‘quants’) use business statistics to:
- Conduct statistical interpretations
- Develop new metrics from existing
input data
- Identify new input fields required
to build new metrics
- Build compound metrics from existing
ones
- Determine how to extrapolate
organizational performance
- Mine year-over-year data for trends
- Interpret the relevance of gaps
between peer group and world-class scores
To understand where to start in the sales benchmarking curriculum, click here to contact Sales Benchmark Index.
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