This is the second ebook in our Sales Management Series. In this ebook, we’re going to discuss the basics of metrics in Sales Management.

The use of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure a sales team’s growth or contraction have been used for many years. Some examples include gross sales, net revenue, products sold, and others that demonstrate how a company has succeeded (or not) through a particular period (quarter or year).

But these particular KPIs are actually lagging indicators—so called because they only reflect what has been done. It is rather like the final score of a football game that’s already been played—by the time lagging indicators are recorded, it is too late to change anything. Hence, KPIs are needed which help predict what those lagging indicators will be. These are called leading indicators. As you’ll see, leading indicators are used much too infrequently in sales. We’ll discuss what they should be and how they should be used.

We will also be discussing the combined use of leading and lagging indicators within CRM, and why this is such a vital necessity for sales analysis today.

I hope you find this, and all the ebooks in this series, of helpful use!

This is the first in a series of ebooks covering the vital subject of Sales Management. In this ebook, we’re going to cover the basic essentials of the subject: Getting rapidly up and running when you’re first put on the job, taking on a team, the mindset you need, the subject of management, a sales manager’s virtues, dealing with people, and the technology you need.

Future ebooks in this series will deal with the vital metrics of sales management, and sales management through CRM.

I firmly believe that sales is the most important profession for dealing with today’s turbulent world and economy, for salespeople create wealth and produce peace. But salespeople need a competent, stable leader—and that would be you, the sales manager! Hopefully, these books, written from my own substantial sales management experience, will help to guide you to a successful sales management role.

Let’s get started!

In the last few years, there has certainly been a lot of talk about sales enablement—it’s one of those trendy terms that came around and has definitely remained. It has come to the point now where software vendors are promoting a new type of solution called a Sales Enablement Platform (SEP). In one respect this is great news, for salespeople have never needed more enabling than they do today. There’s only one problem: just what is a Sales Enablement Platform?

There certainly is no sales enablement “magic bullet”—you utilize it and bang! instant results! People today will jump on any train when they hear it will bring immediate positive painless change—even as they know there is no such thing. It’s like trying to win a gold medal without doing any training, even though you know that can never happen.

So what is sales enablement, really, and where is it going? Is it just a buzzword that becomes an umbrella for various solutions? And what exactly is a sales enablement platform?

Depending on which vendor you reference, an SEP sounds an awful lot like a CRM. But at least one vendor I found goes well out of their way to say that their product, this SEP, is most definitely not a CRM. Yet that same vendor states that their SEP has “CRM characteristics.” Another SEP calls itself, “The Sales Enablement CRM.” Other SEP vendors spell out benefits that sound exactly like those of a CRM application. What gives?

However we define it, sales enablement is very important today, and will become more so in the future. Why? Because even if you have a top performer, how much better are they going to be if they have the right tools?

Let’s have a look at what sales enablement really entails, and what a Sales Enablement Platform really is and what it should be.

How important is CRM in this digital age? How does it affect a company, the users, and most importantly the company experience? In this ebook, we’ll have a look at all of these aspects, for the role of CRM has become more important than ever.

Processes

Today some C-level executives are very nervous as they feel the growing pains of the digital transformation that has been occurring on a steep curve for the last several decades. The only way to deal with that transformation is through technological processes—and these technological processes are the only way to run a company today.

It’s gotten to the point now that if a process malfunctions, it can wreak major havoc with company operations. For example, if something goes wrong with an e-commerce application, a valuable transaction doesn’t occur. In another area, the data flow is interrupted and a crucial operation doesn’t happen, and vital data is lost. Or, you’re selling live in a video chat, reach the most important part of your pitch, and you lose your connection.

In sales that series of processes is, in fact, CRM. CRM applications have come from a technological “nice to have” up to the point where a company cannot live without one. I would say that CRM is the “operating system” of a company. It is the heart, it is the hub because the “C” stands for “Customer” and without customers, a company doesn’t exist.

How does your company remain aware of a customer and their details? CRM! You need to understand customer account information, contact data, what kind of activities have taken place with them, their assigned sales rep, calls, emails, leads, opportunities, and everything else that would comprise a 360-degree view of that customer.

Customers have come to expect a level of care and attention that can only be obtained through CRM. They become impatient if you’re not instantly aware of their purchase history, preferences, and recommendations. They expect you to have a perfect profile of them, and you should. All of this makes up what today is referred to as the CX—“Customer eXperience.” An effective CX is a holistic one. From that customer’s buying journey, we can then create a personalized experience. This cannot be done without CRM.

Of course, when you have a CRM armed with all this data, you have to use it. It’s just like anything in life—many people have things in their houses or offices that they never use. With a CRM system, company staff need to actually interact with it.

If that’s going to happen, the CRM itself must possess spectacular ease of use, because salespeople should not be the only ones interacting with it. It isn’t just one division or one department; it has to be every department. How else can you obtain a great experience for the customer—that all-important CX?

Training

When a CRM solution is not intuitive, it takes much longer to learn. A non-intuitive quality will also impact its everyday use; when salespeople or others in a company have trouble understanding an application, they will tend to shy away from it. That means that vital data may be entered incorrectly into CRM, or not be entered at all.

To get a CRM in broad use across a company, it must be easily learned, which is where ease of use comes in. Pipeliner CRM excels in this area, as it can be learned by a new user in hours, as compared to the weeks and sometimes even months of other CRM solutions. We have ensured ease of use and learning through our visual orientation, consistent across the product.

Our completely visual approach has been part of our user interface strategy from the beginning. This strategy extends to every screen created. When a user learns one screen, its similarity to others means that progressive screens can be rapidly understood.

Additionally, we’ve built learning right into the product, so that users have access to product information right at their fingertips. People don’t all learn in the same way, so not only is this information in text and graphical form but increasingly in video form as well. We also have tutorials, and a way to contact support if for some reason the user doesn’t find what they’re looking for.

Benefits and Requirements

Given that every business must have a CRM or find themselves out of business in the future,it now becomes important to select the right CRM. What CRM benefits does a company require?

These benefits must be examined in detail. Different stakeholders—management, finance, general users—have different requirements. For example, not everyone will need all customer details but may require fast overviews through dashboards or reports.

It’s also true that requirements change, and so technology needs to change right along with them. Technological innovation, too, can drive change (introduce new benefits) and can affect what a company desires, needs and wants.

I am often asked why I have a “disproportionate” number of developers compared to marketing and sales personnel. Most SaaS businesses are generally the reverse and weigh far more in favour of sales and marketing. I have followed the advice of educator and author Peter Drucker, who said that to have a competitive advantage you must create the future. That only happens with a healthy investment in R&D. I believe, in our case, it is the right approach. Today we have a fantastic product that is only getting better.

Let’s fully explore what a CRM is, and isn’t…and why we believe Pipeliner CRM is the only truly efficient CRM for the 2020s, and the future.

In this ebook, I am going to share my secrets of building a business, following the analogy of building a house. There are many similarities between these two endeavours, and many of the same factors must be considered. In actuality, you can apply the factors I’ll be laying out to either activity.

Vision

Any endeavour in life must begin with a clear vision of what you want to achieve. If you don’t have a definite idea of what your house should look like, inevitably others will impose their ideas of how it should appear. We know from life that many people have blindly accepted such advice, and have ended up living in houses that they didn’t like.

Blindly accepting someone else’s advice about how you should proceed can, of course, happen in many ways. For example, how many people have you been advised to bring into your life that you’re not really fond of? It even happens that someone who has only been married for a short time suddenly realizes, “I shouldn’t be married to this person!”

Everyone has their own individual vision. You might not only have a vision for a house, but for a whole city. Why not? It has certainly happened, and just as certainly become reality. A U.S. Senator and copper mining magnate named William Andrews Clark had the foresight to establish a tiny desert town as a maintenance stop on the Los Angeles-Salt Lake City Railroad in 1905. Clark’s actions quite literally put Las Vegas—today a world-famous multi-billion dollar resort—on the map.

We know there are other visionaries who have built unbelievable places. The city of Dubai, arguably one of the top tourist destinations in the world for the wealthy, is also built on the shifting sands of the desert. It includes the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa. It was Sheikh Khalifa, Emir of Abu Dhabi, who had this amazing vision and brought it to fruition.

Don’t blindly accept others’ judgments of your vision. Likewise, don’t judge others’ visions–you never know where they’ll end up.

Not Just a Dream

If you’re going to have a vision to build something, don’t keep it as some far-off dream. Many people want to create something and end up endlessly sitting on the couch, in front of the TV, thinking about it. They talk about what they would like to build, but never actually do anything about it. A vision without action is merely a dream. To become reality, a vision requires action.

At the same time, the accomplishment of that vision requires commitment. That commitment can and often does consist of many painful experiences. I know there are probably many who don’t want to hear that today but ask any Olympic champion how easy or painless it was to get there.

Take for example the champion swimmer. They rise at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning and train for 6, 7, 8 hours a day. They do that for several years, and if they’re extremely good, they win a gold medal. But then they lose the next gold medal by a fraction of a second, so they have to become motivated to put in all that intense work all over again. It requires a tremendous amount of commitment and dedication.

When you have a vision, it takes a lot of painful experience and considerable commitment to reach it.

Funding

It’s also true that you can have the grandest vision in the world, but it requires power to bring it about, or it will never happen. Visions can be quite costly. The bigger the vision, the more it will cost. Jesus even pointed this out when he said, “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?”

Really pursuing a vision cannot be done without money. When you begin your endeavour, you must assess whether or not you have enough money to make it. If you yourself don’t have the funding, can you obtain credit or investment money from others?

Obtaining funding doesn’t mean that the risk is reduced, or that you’ll have a reduction in hard work, dedication, frustration and everything else that goes with it. But you will need proper funding to build your vision.

Sheikh Khalifa was able to accomplish his vision of the tallest building in the world because he had nearly endless financial resources, from oil. The majority of us don’t have such resources, though, and must work hard to find them.
Time Frame
When accomplishing your vision, time is a very important factor. In erecting a building, you’re coordinating an enormous number of tasks, all of which must be completed within certain time frames. As any contractor will tell you, delays in construction are very costly.

Another aspect of time must be regarded also—the time at which you decide to pursue your vision. For example, a great many homes were completed and ready to sell in 2008, when the market collapsed. Many of these homes were sold at prices well below what they were worth, and some of the larger ones weren’t sold at all.

Risk

There are other risk factors you must take into account. As an example, in Los Angeles, we worry about earthquakes. There’s also a risk of fire here, and if the house you’ve just built is caught right in the middle of a fire, it is now gone.

You might see the risk factor as requiring a bit of luck, which is also involved. To successfully build something, you need to be at the right place, the right time, with the right people in the right places all working together with great spirit to build something outstanding.

The Human Factor

The larger the project, the more people involved, which makes any undertaking more complex and can cause more problems. When people are involved, there will always be issues,—it is good and evil in all of us.

People also come and go, and the more important their role is, the more their absence is an issue. For example, what if one of your core personnel has an accident and cannot be there, and you have a deadline to build your house?

Doubt

As I said earlier, there will always be critics and criticism. Constructive criticism can help, but just blatant negative criticism does not. If you know your vision is correct, you always have to reaffirm with yourself that your vision is something you can do.

There will, of course, be times you yourself will doubt your own vision. That doubt, like the negative criticism, won’t help you, either. You have to hang on, not give up because there will certainly be moments when you want to quit and walk away.

Your vision, you will find, is the source of your inner energy, the source of your power, the fuel for your engine. If you constantly need approval from others, you will fail. Only if you believe what you have inside you, what is motivating you, will you succeed. Even the best coach and mentor cannot coach you enough if your inner vision is not strong. We come into, and go out of, this world alone. The only thing that will get you through is your own power you have within yourself. Never give in to the naysayer or the doubter, whether it’s someone else or yourself.

Remember that a vision is only impossible to accomplish if it’s not done. So hang onto it and do it!

As you are building your vision, you move through such issues, and the vision becomes more and more clear. It also becomes purer, like gold being refined.

In this ebook, I’m going to share how we built our house, and also share the principles we learned along the way.

For any company, selecting a CRM solution for a company is a major undertaking. Gartner has just provided an in-depth guide for doing so entitled “Select the Best-Suited CRM Solution with Gartner’s Evaluation Model”.

Gartner’s guide is meant as a highly technical guide for an analyst, and we’ll be using it as a reference for this ebook. But a point I made recently is that many times the wrong people—often a combination of executive and IT personnel—make decisions for which CRM system a company should adopt. This decision leaves out the people who will actually use it: salespeople. Using another field as an example, an architect would never be allowed to choose the tools that the builders are going to use to construct a house—that decision would be strictly up to the builders themselves. Similarly, I think salespeople should at least be included in the CRM selection process.

Hence, this Ebook is meant for the potential user and is a more down-to-earth guide for selecting a CRM solution. That means that anyone could select a CRM solution, not just a high-end technical analyst.

In the last few years, there has certainly been a lot of talk about sales enablement—it’s one of those trendy terms that came around and has definitely remained.

There certainly is no sales enablement “magic bullet”—you utilize it and bang! instant results! People today will jump on any train when they hear it will bring immediate positive painless change—even as they’ve known there is no such thing. It’s like trying to win a gold medal without doing any training, even though you know that can never happen.

So what is sales enablement, really, and where is it going? Is it just a buzzword that becomes an umbrella for various solutions?

However we define it, sales enablement is very important today, and will become more so in the future. Why? Because even if you have a top performer, how much better are they going to be if they have the right tools?

In this ebook, I’m not going to try and cover the entire broad aspect of sales enablement, as we’d be here forever. For example, sales enablement begins with finding and hiring the right people. I’ll be writing here about enabling “the right people” that are already there, and willing.

You can only really enable the sales team and others when you have someone who is the “enabler.” With a great football or soccer team, that person would be the coach. You can have the best players in the world, but if you don’t have a good coach, it won’t work. So in addition to having the right salespeople and the right team members, I’m also speaking from the viewpoint of having the right coach.

We’ll also be talking about arming your sales team with the right tools to be effective and efficient. With the right tools, you can get in the game…and win.

In the world I was born into, people went to school in the traditional way. During that time, you were asked what you wanted to be one day. You went to elementary, middle school, high school and university. You learned a profession, and you worked in that profession most of your life.

In those days not many people switched from one profession to another. Not only did most remain in the same profession, but even with the same company. It wasn’t nearly as possible as it is today to move from one city to another, let alone from one country to another. As time passed, mobility greatly improved—automobiles, trains and planes. But this movement grew slowly because the workforce was slow to change.

We didn’t learn new things, at least not at the rate we must learn them now. We were more or less like the Freemasons, brought into the “mysterious insights” of some profession. We learned those and then built on them over time.

There has certainly been a radical shift in this pattern—today’s we’re confronted with a constantly changing overwhelming stream of knowledge. It is this shift, and the solutions to address it, that we will be addressing in this ebook. I speak from a unique point of view: both before and after this change.

Let’s dive in, and see how we may all get along better in today’s constantly evolving data avalanche!

Our Mission

We offer a way to a prosperous, peaceful life!

Today it seems like humans and technology have become combined or even equal.

But as a CRM vendor, we believe that technology should serve as a vehicle for all people in the world—if they responsibly seek independence, freedom and wealth. It is clear that without technology, no one can participate in a global economy, and that is why we want to reach as many people as possible.

If you are a sales rep, a manager, or an organization, our mission is to put people first and to promote prosperity. We do this through sales because sales have the power to produce wealth and create peace.

Join us on this journey!