Football season is full swing which means it’s the time of year to start planning for 2017 revenue, sales territories, number of sellers, coverage design, quotas, etc. It was only 9 weeks ago that NFL coaches were finalizing their strategies, rosters and making cuts for the salary caps. Like many NFL teams, there’s usually a request from the top to produce more with less. This year, what if you could look at your business with a different lens to have a smarter game plan, deploy resources more efficiently and win? Try these three views of your business to get game changing insights for 2017.
- Which Customers Should You Keep? Yes, you can let customers go. You’ve probably heard that seller who says they’re just not getting any traction with that agency despite repeated pitches and RFP responses. And what about those new clients activated this year that have been gradually ramping their spend or only made a few buys. Dust off your CRM data and plot these clients against two criteria – pitch activity and wins. This will expose those clients that are consuming too much precious sales time without results and conversely, those where the activity is paying off. But what about those nascent growing clients with light activity but good win rates? They’re worth probing deeper to see if they have the potential to move up to the right. Do this exercise across the organization and see which clients to prioritize for 2017.
- Which Customers Will Leave You? While clients and agencies change their spend over time for a variety of reasons, most ad sales teams only have visibility long after they’re gone. And too late to have tried to prevent it. One big internet media company analyzed their “inactive” clients who stopped spending after four continuous quarters, found that if they had kept half active at the same quarterly spend rate, they would have more than covered the team’s gap for quarter. Further inspection showed many of these were preventable. While this should not only be an input to 2017 for win backs, progressive data-driven sales teams will constantly be looking out for customers that have not only gone inactive but are on that path.
- Where’s the Revenue Hiding? On most sales teams the 80/20 rule is alive and well where 20% of the clients generate 80% of the revenue. This is a precarious situation as the revenue is too concentrated posing significant risk if any one of them slows their spend. And it’s hard to blame the sellers as they’re constantly trying to prioritize where their time yields the most benefit as they go the ponds with the biggest, hungriest fish. Usually at the detriment of other well stocked ponds because maybe they don’t have the contacts yet, are too busy with other accounts, etc. Start by examining each team and book of business for the revenue concentration vs. potential. It’s very likely there’s some great places to fish making a solid business case to hire new sellers. That’s a much more fun ask for 2017 investment when you’ve got the data to justify the ROI.
We ask many teams across the industry if and how they’re doing this. Surprisingly, many wish they were but aren’t. Most don’t have the right data and tools. For 2017, it’s time to get the right tools, so you’re spending more of your time building strategies around these insights instead of nights and weekends building spreadsheets. Like the leading NFL teams coming into week 7, they did their homework during the preseason and are executing the playbook. Contact us for a peek at how boostr can help with these and other game changing insights.
