Lessons to learn from 2020
Lars Kurandt-Jaeger
Let me help you to become more efficient in the production of beverages, chemicals, food and other liquids.
Reviewing 2020 and referencing to 2019 (which was my first year at AP) I pulled some metrics out of our system. This is what I got:
2020 vs. 2019
Revenue: a lot more than 2020, target more than achieved
Demonstrations: 62%
Meetings (including virtual): 96%
Outgoing emails: 132%
New accounts: 114%
Phone calls: 127%
Driven kilometers: 27%
Although revenue grew a lot (I can not post any numbers, sorry) it felt more like I was networking all the time. Finding new contacts (I can not pull those data easily therefore can not compare), new accounts. Keep close to existing clients. Help them out wherever possible. On the one hand side it is amazing that I added more accounts than in 2019 because every year it will get harder to find new prospects. On the other hand I had more time to do it as I was not driving much. Demonstrations were down a lot as many clients did not open their doors for me (and I did not want to see them due to obvious reasons. Better not meeting KPI than sick. I need to stress that my boss did not pressure me to fulfill my KPIs such as meetings and demos in a pandemic). Surprising to me is that the amount of meetings are basically identical. Certainly in 2020 most were virtual but still...Outgoing emails and phone calls underline that it was a year of networking. As I could not see many clients I did not drive a lot. Another surprise to me: Although I found very few opportunities in 2020 my pipeline for this year is looking better than what is was like beginning of 2019.
Conclusions: Working from home is working for me, only see clients when I have to is getting me where I need to be. The revenue underlines that my way of doing business, treating my customers, is well appreciated. Being local helps a lot, in particular in a pandemic when not every one can travel freely.
I do not expect that 2021 will be way different than 2020 as I am again facing travel restrictions limiting my options seeing my clients. And case numbers are not where they were in between. Future will tell.
Good luck to everyone! How did you manage 2020? What did you learn?
Business Development Manager @ Siemens | AI and Software Defined Automation | Go to Market Strategy | Sales and Business Process
4 年Impressive achievements in 2020, Lars! Congratulations! Sounds like you have a reasonable boss ??