How to Prove Your Sales Inquiry Program
Generates More on the Top Line
than it Costs on the Bottom Line

Closing the loop on the effect of sales inquiries on revenues has, and always will be, a challenge. Despite the high level of sales force automation, whenever you rely on feedback by sales people, the results will never be more than marginally correct. There’s no point in fighting this because there are, after all, more important things to bug sales people over than reporting on sales inquiries.

The correct objective for an inquiry program is limited to identifying sales opportunities and prospects. Sales people still have to follow up and make winning sales presentations. That’s why, when allocating budgets, it’s important to have a credible number for the effect of inquiry generation on sales.

The simplest and possibly most convincing way to measure the effect of inquiries on sales is to compare when invoicing begins on new accounts over a specific period of time with inquiries generated over a comparable period for the previous year. This method has two advantages; the numbers are totally verifiable and you don’t have to rely on reporting by the field sales organization.

Since experience has shown that it takes a full year for all sales to be recorded from inquiries are generated, this fact has to be taken into consideration. Here’s how to benchmark the effect of sales inquiries on sales revenues:

1. Ask your accounting department for a list of new accounts invoiced for the first time over a specific six month period. Be sure the list includes the amount invoiced for each account.

2. Generate a list of sales inquiries generated over the same six month invoicing period from the previous year.

3. Alphabetize both lists and match the company names to see how many new accounts sent in an inquiry prior
to the date account was first invoiced.

4. Add the number of company matches and divide the total by the number of inquiries to arrive at a percentage of inquiries sold. Add the amounts invoiced and divide that total by the amount spent for lead generation (based on the average cost of a lead) to arrive at the ROB (Return on Budget).

The result will provide a benchmark for future measurement of lead generation. Our experience has shown that a well managed sales team should close between 15 and 20 percent of all leads.

If you find that the results for your program are much less than this, chances are your sales people are not following up promptly on leads or are not winning a high percentage of sales presentations from inquiries.

For free information on sales assessments go to www.SalesJudge.com.