If you want to improve your sales performance, you need to know how you stack up against your competitors. Comparing your sales operations with other companies can help you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. But how do you go about doing that? Here are some tips to help you benchmark your sales operations effectively.
The first step is to decide what aspects of your sales operations you want to compare. You can use various metrics to measure your sales efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity. For example, you can look at your sales cycle length, conversion rates, quota attainment, revenue per rep, customer retention, and customer satisfaction. However, not all metrics are equally important or applicable to your industry, market, and goals. You should choose the ones that align with your sales strategy, reflect your value proposition, and capture your competitive advantage.
It is important to worry, not only about strategy, but also about growth phase. A $20m startup organization operating in the same space as an established $500m organization will have different metrics / KPIs for their entire org & RevOps teams. Additionally, the work and activities completed by RevOps teams in earlier stage organizations is not the same as in large ones. Context matters!
-In my experience, what metrics you should be focusing on the most are two fold. 1) What makes the company money, so you become a valuable asset. 2) Knowing how these metrics give you the ability to maximize your compensation plan. In the pharmaceutical industry in particular, it is incredibly important to understand how the industry has changed. Post pandemic, and post affordable healthcare act, most physicians struggle with PBM’s (pharmacy benefit managers) and understanding how to work with internal staff and specialty pharmacies is paramount to being successful.
The next step is to find reliable sources of data and information about your competitors' sales operations. You can use different methods to gather this information, such as market research, industry reports, customer feedback, social media, web analytics, and sales intelligence tools. However, you should be careful about the quality, accuracy, and relevance of the data you collect. You should also respect the privacy and confidentiality of your competitors and customers. You should only use ethical and legal ways to obtain and analyze the information.
The third step is to normalize and compare the data you have collected. Normalizing means adjusting the data to account for differences in scale, scope, and context. For example, you can use ratios, percentages, averages, or indexes to make the data comparable. Comparing means analyzing the data to identify the gaps, trends, and patterns between your sales operations and your competitors'. You can use various tools and techniques to compare the data, such as charts, graphs, tables, dashboards, and scorecards.
The final step is to use the insights you have gained from comparing your sales operations with your competitors' to learn and improve. You should not just focus on the numbers, but also on the underlying reasons, processes, and behaviors that explain them. You should also not just copy what your competitors are doing, but rather find ways to differentiate yourself and create more value for your customers. You should use the comparison as a starting point to set realistic and specific goals, plan and implement actions, and monitor and evaluate results.
I wonder if competitors are ever the right benchmark? Customer satisfaction, win rates, churn rates and repeat business are nicer lenses. The key has always been to me to know what good looks like for you and your customers and go after developing excellence through two routes. Operational efficiency and operational excellence. Put energy in that vs worrying about your competition!?