Sales is an art and a science. Therefore sales management is filled with misconceptions. One major misconception is the ability to control revenue. As a sales rep or sales manager, you cannot control revenue. You cannot just go out and order revenue as if it was a delicious cheese pizza.
As a sales rep or sales manager what you can control is your activities, your objectives, and what you focus on. The Sales Metrics Chain defines how your activities flow into your objectives and how those objectives impact your business results.
To demonstrate the Sales Metrics Chain let’s say we want to increase top line revenue by 3%. How would we go about that since we can’t directly control revenue? How many new customers do we need to increase revenue by 3%? Let’s say that to increase revenue by 3% we need to secure 4 new customers per quarter. And …