Gartner recently released a report titled Strengthen Your Sales Analytics Initiative with These 6 Best Practices and it is being promoted by PROS. It is an excellent report and we recommend that you read it.
In the report, Best Practice No. 3: Focus on Sales Metrics That Make Your Sales Processes both Efficient and Effective is a critical element to retail banking’s continuing success. As retail banks begins to adopt a sales culture, establishing the right sales metrics will be a key consideration for success.
Efficiency is about streamlining your sales operations. Effectiveness is much more strategic. Are you selling what you could be selling? Are you fulfilling your sales potential?
Here is what we mean. It is relatively straightforward to track volume – accounts opened and account closed. But tracking transactions just tells one part of the story. Understanding what could have been opened at the point of sales versus what was opened tells a very different story.
Eligibility plays a major role on what banks can present to a potential customer. In fact, many business banking products in particular require a complex and often difficult eligibility qualification process. 84% of small businesses are eligible for an average of 5.5 small business banking products. That means that a bank can sell more than 5 business banking products to each business customer. However, the average number of accounts opened at the point-of-sale is a mere 1.2 products! Those numbers paint a very different picture.
There is a huge gap on what you could have opened versus what was opened.
Banks need to track products that prospects qualify for versus account openings AND the gap between them. The actual sales numbers are meaningless in terms of sales efficiency and effectiveness without understanding the potential sales.
Understanding this gap is key to effectively managing sales efficiency and effectiveness. The data will paint a more complete picture and help retail executive teams manage the sales organization to increase sales performance and enhance organizational efficiency.
Ignite’s Profit Gap Analysis illustrates what was sold, what could have been sold based on the customer’s eligibility, potential profit, and the resulting gap. Management can drill down to quickly see which products are being opened in each channel, by which bank representative, and the individual product contribution to profitability. To learn more on how you can close the gap, click here.
