Lost Opportunity for Opportunity Management

A 2004 study by Dickie & Trailer reported 'dismal' pipeline analysis in many companies. Why oh why then do so many organisations still get wrapped up in activity analysis?

By Anderson Hirst on Jan 31, 2011

A 2004 study by Dickie & Trailer reported 'dismal' pipeline analysis in many companies. Why oh why then do so many organisations still get wrapped up in activity analysis? The overarching sales skill that is so often neglected is proactively and responsibly managing a timely funnel of sales opportunities. It is not number of calls per day that counts, but accurate delivery of customer revenues year on year. This, in my opinion is what sales people should be made accountable for, measured and managed on.
A few years back whilst working as technical sales rep, I remember one colleague being sacked after a customer rang in to say that had 'not seen their account manager for a while'.
It turned out, that despite filling in call reports every week, the rep in question had been starting his own business for 9 month before the organisation worked out what was going on!
A reminder that a resourceful rep can easily manipulate activity analysis, but cannot fudge conversion of opportunities!