Sales Force Benchmarking Just Got Easier

8 December 2011

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Ever tried to benchmark your sales organization’s performance? It’s not an easy or inexpensive proposition. Finding objective, credible data has usually meant commissioning research, or settling for an apples-to-oranges affair with poorly-matched data. Now Sales Management Association underwriter The TAS Group aims to change that with its new “Dealmaker Index,” a free tool that provides insight to both individuals and sales teams on sales performance and productivity.

Too often, these kinds of self-assessment tools offered by professional services firms come off like a “Cosmo Quiz” – those inane questionnaires (in the eponymous magazine) that tell you the over-obvious, like whether or not your boyfriend is a cretin. Not that we’re reading it.

Dealmaker Index, on the other hand, yields rich insight around sales productivity, sales process efficiency, and deal analytics. Indexed against TAS Group’s large, and growing, data base of sales force metrics, including 200+ firms (TAS touts an overall audience of 750,000+ sales professionals). The assessment results include indexed scores and rankings comparing a respondent’s results with others in the TAS database. Results and rankings are shown graphically, as well as in a rather comprehensive narrative format.

Not every insight is useful; some simply provide predictable conclusions to questions like “is your sales strategy aligned with your company strategy?” The real value comes in the indexed results, which analyze specific aspects of your sales process, methodology, and success rate. Taken as a whole, the output represents an astonishingly comprehensive assessment, with real value to sales leaders. Given that my survey took about ten minutes to complete, the value seems well worth the investment (in time, the tool is free). I would think many sales managers would find the tool a useful team exercise, with salespeople’s individual results providing a basis for further discussion and inquiry, both individually and in a team or sales meeting setting.

Sales Management Association will host a webcast with TAS Group on Wednesday, January 11th which will highlight key findings based on the data accumulated by the tool so far. TAS’s CEO, Donal Daly, will present. The session is free and open to the public. Register for the webcast here: <<www.xxx.xxx>> Registrants are encouraged to complete their own Dealmaker Index prior to the session (about 10-15 minutes, registration required): www.dealmakerindex.com


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