How Do You Track Success?

Most companies prepare a growth plan to chart their future success. After determining the goals and setting the clear path on how to reach those goals, the next most important step is to track the steps along that path. If we don’t track whether we follow the steps and how successful we are in taking each step along the way, we are in danger of having one or more missteps take us in the wrong direction and never reaching those goals.

For sales it is important to remember not to just track how much or how many sales the team brings in, but to track each individuals’ efforts. How many customers did they call, e-mail, and visit each month? How many quotations did they prepare? What products are they quoting most frequently? What percentage of those quotes are they winning? The individual sales persons should have monthly target amounts for each of these areas and they should be tracked to see if they are reaching, surpassing, or falling short on the targets. It is much easier to re-direct a sales person who has ‘fallen off course’ in the short term, than to look back at the end of the year and try to determine what went wrong when it's too late to recover.

We all need some direction in order to know where we are headed and when we plan to get there. Without direction, we find ourselves wandering aimlessly, or headed in the wrong direction without even know it. It’s like leaving home by car to a new location without the benefit of a map or directions. We may eventually find our way, but we will have wasted a lot of time and resources trying to get there. Make sure you have a clear set of directions for your sales department as well as the rest of your company.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.