To Love Baseball is to Love Strategy and Statistics

Statistics may be defined as "a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty." ~W.A. Wallis



I’m often asked about sales statistics and/or analytics. Normal sales statistics are win loss ratios, win loss reasons and who your competition is when you lose or win. While these are very important there is much more to consider as you analyze your sales teams success and potential of future success.

Some people would say that it isn’t very important to analyze all the sales data while others people might say that they just don’t have the time or the capability to analyze the data. Before we get into the details of sales statics, let’s take a look at two of my favorite subjects outside of sales, baseball and fishing.

Why is baseball considered America’s past time? Why are we so attracted to a game that is so slow as compared to most other sports? I would say one reason is that it is a very strategic game with hundreds of decisions being made during the game to try to outwit the other team. I would also say that we love to look at all the statistics which help the managers decide who is going to bat, when to replace a pitcher, when to put the hit and run on, when to try to steal, when to bunt and so much more. Almost all of the decisions are based on statistics from past situations that are similar and who the players are and their past statistics. To love baseball is to love strategy and statistics. You also have to love the analysis of the statistics because that is what drives the strategy.

Not many sport fishermen keep statistics but I am one of the few. Every time I go fishing I log the water temp, weather, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, moon phase, where I fished, how I fished and detail about what I caught. These details help me to set my strategy for the days fishing and take a lot of the guess work out of my fishing strategy. This keeping of statistics has improved my fishing success 10 fold and I’m not the only one. Most people who are really successful at fishing keep a log and refer to it often. I recently read an article about the person who holds the previous and current state record for striped bass caught in South Carolina and Georgia (previous record 59lb., 8oz., current record 63lb., and 4oz.). In this article he talks about his fishing log and how no one ever gets to look at this log. I currently will let anyone look at my log but when I break the state record that may change.

If you are not keeping statistics about your sales success and failures you are bound to repeat your mistakes. Most companies keep the basic sales statistics but don’t take advantage of the many other statistics that can be captured, measured and analyzed. Beyond the won loss details you should measure things like, time in each step of your sales process, success rates at each step of the process, win loss ratios by product, industry, strategy, location, sales person, and competition. Over time you can develop alarms for any data that shows that a deal is at risk (i.e. too long in a step, technical or product issues, pricing issues, etc).

I know that many people don’t have the proper type CRM system to collect and analyze the sales data. To do this properly you not only need a CRM product to capture and analyze the data, you must have a well defined sales process and a CRM system that drives and enforces this process. Of course, I believe that Salesnet is the only system that truly drives your sales process with a patented workflow engine and smart forms to insure that the right data is captured at the right time. Until next time:

“Statistics can be made to prove anything - even the truth.”