Are You Maximizing Your Sales Capacity?

By David Greene | July 11, 2012

Everyone in the industry is striving to grow revenue meaningfully and in short order. Some are considering expansion strategies and some new offerings or a new model (expensive, time-consuming, and delayed impact). Many are seeking training solutions (often inaccurately targeted) to improve sales results. And just about everyone is looking for a way to drive more leads into the pipeline (which you should always be doing anyway!).

Though all potentially valid solutions, it is becoming increasingly clear to us in our work throughout the financial services industry that if you are not intensely focused on your sales capacity – ensuring speed, efficiency, and effectiveness in the sales process – you will soon find yourself well behind the best-in-class competition … and susceptible to being replaced by someone who is.

If you want to drive best-in-class results, before concluding on any revenue growth strategy, it is critical to know whether or not you are maximizing your existing sales capacity.

So how do I know if I am maximizing my sales capacity?

Step One: Calculate Your Sales Capacity

Download the Maximizing Your Sales Capacity Calculator Now

Whether you are a Financial Advisor, Sales Manager, or Executive Manager, those most effectively selling to capacity make sales metric-tracking a priority, aiding them in both performance development and sales forecasting. With the ability to concretely identify capacity gaps within the sales process, you are well positioned for meaningful growth and better-targeted growth strategies.

Step Two: Identify Areas For Improvement

“The Metrics Trifecta” – Three Levers For Success

Close ratio: The ratio of closed opportunities relative to total prospects
Calls–to-close: The number of contacts or meetings required to generate client commitment
Average revenue per sale: The revenue generated in each sale

There are certainly other metrics by which to measure your capacity to sell relating to lead generation, client service, and sales management. But these three fundamental metrics are supported by trainable and coachable skills that, if fully developed, can make a huge impact on the bottom line.

So What Do I Do About Maximizing My Sales Capacity?

You must have a handle on these metrics. If you don’t, how in the world can you effectively plan, manage, and forecast your business? It is striking how many don’t – either because they lack the ability to capture it, don’t put the time into it, or the input can’t be trusted.

Assuming you are capturing this data and it is trustworthy, the rest is simple (though not always easy!) In future blogs, we will address each one of these metrics (and more), with some insight on the impact from improvement and the tactics/skills that, if fully developed, will lead to best-in-class results.

Call To Action

To best and most simply address your opportunity to maximize sales capacity, consider the following:

How are you tracking the core sales metrics needed to effectively assess your revenue-generating performance and potential?
Is the information accurate? Is there a common and consistent nomenclature and uniform agreement/understanding on the stages of the sales process and pipeline?
Isolate the key metrics that are lagging and offer the greatest opportunity for revenue impact. (Download Sales Capacity Calculator to help you do so)
Leverage Sales Leadership to hone the lagging metrics with a discipline and structure for team and advisor development.
Where needed, seek advice and help in how to improve and coach around those particular metrics, including the consideration of a financial advisor training program tailored to your client promise, sales process, and culture, and implemented whereby you can concretely track the results of such a program (using your metrics!).

In our next blog post, we will specifically address the first of these three metrics with an eye toward capacity improvement – the close ratio. In the meantime, check out the calculator if you would like to get a feel for the potential impact of a change in any or all of the core sales metrics. You can also do so by visiting our website at www.greeneconsults.com.

Continue to Part II: Maximizing Your Sales Capacity – Improving Your Close Ratio (It’s More Than Just “Closing Skills”)

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