Before you launch head first into Salesforce training, it’s important to take a step back and recognize why it is exactly that you purchased the system, and assess what it is that you want it to do for your organization.
It’s important for members of the steering committee (or senior management) to define a set of business goals that identify the desired state for your sales team (or other area of the business that is undergoing the actual Salesforce training implementation). These goals are best stated as numerical performance objectives that are not currently being achieved, but are easily and simply communicated to executives. Remember the S.M.A.R.T. rule for defining goals (Specific – Measurable – Action Oriented – Realistic – Time Bound) and avoid vague or overly qualitative goals like “improve collaboration” or “gain visibility”. This kind of goal statement is too soft to drive a business decision.
Here are some good examples of strong goals;
- Improving calls per day to 40
- Shortening the sales cycle by two weeks
- Increasing the number of inbound leads to 100/week
- Increasing the number of converted leads by 25%
- Increasing the conversion or close rate by 15%
- Lowering the cost of customer acquisition by 25%
- Increasing the average order size by $5,000
- Increasing revenues by 22%
- Increasing gross profitability by 10%
- Improving customer retention by 50%
- Increasing customer lifetime value by 24%
- Decreasing customer service complaints by 33%
- Decreasing incorrect orders by 4%
Of course, you can’t have everything. Keep the list as short as realistically (and politically!) feasible. No matter how many metrics there are, senior management has to have a set of priorities for them and ensure that they start with the most important ones first. These objectives will then become key drivers for prioritizing the features and sales management process changes that will be done in the course of your Salesforce training implementation.
SalesForce Training & Consulting is a professional coaching and training firm that specializes in helping companies navigate their way in a Salesforce.com environment. SalesForce Training is based in Toronto, with trainers in Boston and Chicago, providing sales coaching, sales management consulting, Salesforce.com training and Salesforce.com Admin support, sales training and sales personnel assessments.
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