The Data Checklist For Creating A High Performing Sales Organisation

When in the diagnostic phase of improving sales performance for clients we need to gather certain data sets together. The sales management will often ask if we can provide a checklist to help organise the assembling of the critical data. We thought it might be interesting to publish our checklist below:

1. An up to date organisation chart of the sales organisation.
2. Role profiles, candidate profiles and performance contract examples for all in scope positions.
3. Examples of agendas and actions points from recent sales meetings.
4. A copy of the sales strategy.
5. An understanding about decision rights to do with pricing, margin control, discounts and any other (sales) controllable variables.
6. An understanding of the current CRM and how effectively it’s integrated into the sales work flow.
7. Sales pipeline/funnel data showing the critical stages of the sales process and the current conversion ratios – by individual and averages.
8. An extract of customer visit reports and account reviews, with examples of customer account plans.
9. How customers are segmented.
10. How prospects are targeted and qualified.
11. Sales collateral around the Customer Value Proposition, and supporting promotional materials.
12. Current incentive schemes, how they are calibrated and aligned to the required outcomes.
13. The performance management system including how effective the consequences framework is covering the spectrum of outcomes, high performance through average to under performance.
14. Personal development plans, succession and career planning.
15. The market intelligence system including competitor differentiation.
16. Any competitive/market PESTLE and SWOT analysis data.

With this data a real understanding can be gained about the maturity of the sales organisation and an insight into its strengths and weaknesses. Often the act of data gathering becomes a catalyst for understanding root cause problems that further inform the work, sometimes taking it to a different direction. For instance, we were asked to design a sales academy but from the data gathering phase quickly realised that issues around the design of the sales organisation was significantly inhibiting growth, so this was addressed quickly and effectively.