I had an old boss who used to always say, “Your sales numbers tell a story.” Before we get into how to manage through the numbers, we need to make sure we are measuring what matters (Sales Revenue) to tell an accurate story.
There are probably hundreds of sales metrics that you can review, work into your business, and see if they are important. For the home remodeling industry, we focus on a select few:
- Appointments Run
- Estimates Given
- Closed Sales
- Net Sales
- Average Sale Price
- Revenue Per Appointment
While there are synonyms for each of these and some other measurements that can be trickled in, these are the metrics that should be at the core of your sales process. For the sake of this article, we are assuming that your business has a proven scalable sales process already in place. If not, you need to call us.
From a high level, a manager and a sales rep can review these numbers together, and with a proper sample size, they will begin to tell a story:
- Is the rep making enough appointments?
- Is the closing percentage too high, leading to a lot of cancellations?
- Why is the average sale 20% lower than the company average?
You can gain so much knowledge from truly understanding each one of these numbers and the relationship between all of these numbers. Just like a doctor can look at your blood work results and strategize 10 different ways to treat a sick patient, a good manager or sales rep should be able to do the same with their sales metrics.
Matte/Meehan would recommend getting at least 30 days worth of data before strategizing a game plan. In addition, there is a proper way to “manage through the numbers” which we will discuss in our next sales blog. But the fact is, once you have a process and expectations in place, you can look at metrics such as sales revenue and begin to understand what is taking place in the home.