92 • 100 GREAT BUSINESS IDEAS
Sales dashboards highlight key issues: the number of leads and
their sources (highlighting what to continue leveraging and what
to fi x); the quality of the leads; the effectiveness of salespeople at
using leads and making appointments with customers, and ability
to convert appointments to sales.
As well as driving sales, this dashboard approach has other
advantages:
- Managers can help salespeople improve performance by focusing
on issues relevant to each individual. - It promotes a sales-driven culture and focus within the team.
- It provides the pipeline numbers that measure activity and not
just sales.
The information provided by dashboards means that managers
know where to focus their support. They do not need to focus on
salespeople whose month-to-date sales are behind if they have
appointments for the rest of the month, whereas they do need to
support people with no appointments booked, even if they are
exceeding sales targets.
Information from the dashboard approach can be communicated
widely, providing a common language and focus in an organization.
For example, in HSBC Taiwan large plasma screens are provided for
employees. As well as presenting key messages, themes, and news,
they highlight sales information, which both informs and creates
competition between individuals and teams.
In practice
- Assess your information requirements and make information
routinely, consistently, and reliably available, by asking the
following questions: