How to measure your Return on Investment (ROI) for your prospecting
Happy belated New Year! By now, most people are back into the swing of things – it’s the “post-holiday let’s get focused” time of year.
The new year means new goals – so today we are going to chat about prospecting and how to really measure your return on investment.
By now, you will want to have your top 50 prospect list, your SMART Goals (S=Specific, M=Measurable, A=Attainable, R=Relevant and T=Time-Bound), and your desk organized. You are ready to go! But how do you know if it is all going to work? You guessed it, that too is a process!
Measuring your prospecting ROI:
1. Develop your Behavior Cookbook. We like to work backwards on these. Determine your revenue goal for 2015, the average value per client, number of clients needed, number of closing meetings needed and then ultimately number of first meetings needed. You now have your daily activity goal. Done! You know how many appointments you will need to go on and the number you will need to close in order to hit your yearly goal.
2. Next, write down what to do and when to do it. It’s not good enough to know what you have to do, it is vitally important to know WHEN you will be doing them. It really comes down to personal accountability and keeping yourself on track! Track your behaviors over time. At Sandler we use Salesforce.com to monitor our sales activities – but you can do this in a notebook or in a spread sheet. Whatever works best for you.
3. Leading indicators. These are the results you are achieving at the beginning of the business development pipeline – they will help you determine the amount of business you will close in the future!
4. Lagging indicators. These are the results achieved after you have completed your activity – this may include the amount of new business that is closed, revenue generated from the business, the amount of time it takes from first contact to closing the business and the profit margin from new business. Track it all!
5. Archaeological Prospecting. Go back through the business you have generated over the past 3-5 years and track which prospecting activities led to a relationship with each client. How much through referrals? Upselling? Cross selling? Via Social Media? Seminars? Talks? RFP’s? Data truly is King (or Queen)! The more information you have on your activities the better you will be able to track the success….or failure of what you are doing.
CLICK HERE TO USE THE ROI CALCULATOR
It’s all about the game plan and the process. If you have a solid way of doing things that is consistent, it is very easy to see what is working and what is not. Change the things that aren’t working and embellish upon the things that are working!
If you need some help with your Cookbook or analyzing your pipeline, I’m only a phone call - or email – away!
Happy selling in 2015
Donna Bak
Partner & Certified Trainer.
If you'd like to learn more about Donna on LinkedIn click here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/donnabak
