Making the Number: How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance
Product Description
The essential tool kit to achieve breakthrough sales performance improvements.
Numbers don’t lie: 40 percent of all salespeople miss their targets each year. How can sales managers ensure their teams are doing everything possible? The key lies in benchmarking, which is not new for finance or manufacturing but rarely gets applied to sales. Making the Number will teach executives to embrace data-driven decision making and rely less on gut instinct.
Making the Number: How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance
I was hugely dissapointed in this book and strongly suggest people avoid it. The author suggest that Starbucks and a gas station have the same coffee, and that Whole Foods and a regular grocery store carry the same items. The comparisons are ridculous on their face.
More shocking was his characterization of heads of sales as bamboozling CEO’s with happy client talk even though their numbers are not strong. It insults CEO’s and sales leaders. The big lie, that the book is based upon, is that sales leaders are not held accountable.
This is the worse business book I have ever read.
Rating: 1 / 5
In a profession where there are far too many “gurus” who push unsubstantiated systems that have all the buzz phrases and branding, but that simply do not generate a sustained increase in sales, I have found “Making the Number” to be a most needed contribution.
The stories of nebulous forecasting practices and charismatic sales leaders are bang on. The time has come for company sales leaders to be accountable for not only their forecasts, but for sharing exactly how they will achieve those forecast results.
Making the Number describes a methodology for doing just that. If you are looking for the next “flavor of the month” sales guru, look elsewhere. If you need a serious system where you can learn to benchmark the various stages of your sales process against the best in the world, read Making the Number. It has changed someone who is always very careful (skeptical..?) using the words “process” and “sales” in the same sentence, and convinced me that there’s not only benefit, but a glaring need.
-Derek Gatehouse, Author of The Perfect SalesForce: The 6 Best Practices of the World’s Best Sales Teams
Rating: 5 / 5
Making the Number is a must read for any Sales Executive. The techniques described in this book are applicable to any industry and any sales force.
I manage a global sales force and have been using these techniques for many years. When I heard about the book, I immediately purchased and read the book cover to cover in one sitting. I picked up a number of very effective metrics and quickly incorporated them into my daily, weekly, and annual measurements.
Sales benchmarking provides a tangible method for success. By applying the methodology described in this book, any Sales Executive can elevate the performance of his/her sales team to world class status.
I honestly believe that these techniques take the risk and chance out of selling and provide a path for repeatable success, even in a down economy.
I have purchased this book for every manager on my sales team and have recommended it to each of my sales reps.
Rating: 5 / 5
I was quite disappointed in this book as you can see by the 1-star rating. Some of my issues are as follows:
(1) Book seems to have an abundance of “filler” material that does nothing more than reiterate its generic concepts,
(2) The examples used are so very basic and in no way translate to real world situations,
(3) The authors seem to gloss over the task of “using” the data for meaningful, actionable items within a sales organization
(4) In my opinion, and having been through Strategy Deployment Processes as a Finance leader in a >$2B company, the thought of selecting “20-40 metrics” to benchmark against peers is way excessive and would cause you to lose focus very easily. Additionally, finding enough data on peer companies to calculate 20 to 40 metrics would be nearly impossible.
(5) So many overt references to Sales Benchmark Index (main author is the CEO) gives this book the feel of nothing more than a commercial for their other products/services.
You may find a nugget or two of general information that fills in a gap of your own knowledge, but you can likely get that from a general web search on sales benchmarking and avoid paying for this book.
Rating: 1 / 5
I have been following Greg Alexander’s career from afar for some time now. I am pleased that he has been able to put together the essence of his learnings so succinctly in a book. I used to run the largest business book club in the world and know how starved both sales managers and their reps are for solid, case-based data on just what helps seal the sale. Sales benchmarking may sound a little too ‘out there’, but I think readers will find lots of “Aha!’ moments throughout the book. I also feel marketing people, financial types, and even CEOs will appreciate the information and practical advice this book offers. I sometimes felt bad offering so many sales management titles to my book club members, but they often told me that if they got just ONE good idea from a book they were happy. I think they’ll get at least one good idea per *chapter* from this one. My advice is download it to your Kindle ASAP. I did.
Rating: 5 / 5