Sales Controlling
Sales controlling - a hopeless undertaking?
Sales control and sales controlling are not self-runners! The characters who meet here are too contradictory. The thoroughbred salesman, who is interested in people and in the deal and always wants to negotiate and win the individual case - and on top of that is celebrated internally as a Rain Maker - and the figures man, who depicts the real world in figures and wants to peel out the structure from the multitude of individual cases. Can this succeed?
What does the sales controller actually want to achieve?
First of all, a look must be taken at the basis of the business, the business model and the strategy. Obviously, the B2B business model is different from B2C business, business models with regular order flows of standard products different from those with individual project orders, the stationary sales different from online sales, own sales different from partner sales and so on and so forth. These characteristics are elaborated in the description of the business model and are taken into account in the sales strategy and thus in the sales process. This is not least one of the reasons why a good sales professional in one business model will not automatically be successful in another model.
What most models have in common is that the sales employee has to chase after sales opportunities of varying value with his limited time resources. Sales control - whether self-control or explicit control by the management - often means in the end priority setting and success control. In order to set priorities correctly, two things are required above all: Know the customer, channel, partner and the potential or realised profit contribution of the customer, channel or partner, depending on who the sales department is dealing with. This prioritization has a long-term perspective - segmentation and targeting - and a short-term, daily perspective - visit and telephone planning, event preparation, etc. up to the prioritization of customer orders in production and logistics.
And this is precisely the goal of sales controlling: the optimization of the result, improved market shares and market exploitation, increased sales volumes, optimized margins and contribution margins, but also improved delivery capabilities and lower working capital through better forecasts for production and the supply chain.
... and that's where both come together: Even if nobody really finds a higher transparency of their own performance tingling - to be more effective in the sales process with the customer, because they know him better, to focus on the promising customers, because they interpret purchase signals correctly, increase their own bonus, because they start with the right leads and shine with the customer, because they promise what the organization can keep and as much as possible even better than expected - that outweighs a lot.
Sales controlling as a competitive advantage
Creating instruments that relieve sales and provide the right information is a real competitive advantage!
Provide the sales department with a report that clearly illustrates the customer's situation before a customer visit.
Provide the sales department with a planning and forecasting system that starts at the level that is in the sales department's focus and does not unload unnecessary detail requirements from other sales functions. Use modern statistical methods - predictive analytics - to make trends and developments transparent for your work.
Deliver a simple instrument that makes the action situations in the quotation process easily and clearly available and makes the consequences transparent for the company.
If the instruments then still look fancy, then you will reussieren in sales!
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