No one can get through a meeting these days without the topic of data coming up in some way or another. They may have different labels or names to make “Data Talk” easier, but data is data. Some of us love it, some of us hate it, but becoming familiar with business data and figuring out how to make it work for you is a critical skill in every area of business and at every level of an organization. No news flashes here, right?

With this article, I’m not trying to reinvent how to use data. My intent is to stir some thoughts around how to use data with the folks responsible for sales in your organization. 

It is easy to overdo it with sales data. Once you get that Client Relationship Management (CRM) system set up, you might be antsy to get your hands on a bunch of different reports to see what your sales reps are really doing out in the field! 

This is my first caution to you: a CRM is a tool for your sales team, not a tool for you to constantly be checking up on them. They were hired to be responsible sales reps, so their manager should make sure they know how to do that in the CRM your company uses. Then the manager should use the system to help them be more and more successful, not to hold them to task. 

If I am a leader responsible for sales reps, I want them to have some reporting and tools to help them use the system data to be successful, but I don’t want them building out a bunch of different reports. I want them out in the world, building relationships! As long as they enter information and activities about those relationships into the CRM in a timely manner, then they should be able to run a few reports, as needed, to keep themselves true to their goals. 

For sales reps, I suggest starting reports with the following information:

Client Name

Notice I said client. I grew up in a company that made it very clear that clients are our referral sources and customers are the people we do work for. Sometimes these lines can blur depending on a client’s role (like a property manager). But in a CRM it is very easy to tell these two types of contacts apart. Client names are important because our sales team develops relationships with people not companies. 

Client Company Name

We need to know where they work! If they are referring work to us, then their name and the company that employs them are the basics of we should know about them.

Client Industry

You can do a lot of sub layering here, but at a bare-bones level you want to know the industry your client works in. It should not only guide your conversations, but also guide you toward finding more clients in that industry. Plus, you want to look at what industries you have success in, so you can build on that. Or conversely, what industries you have failure in, so you can correct it. 

As a leader, I would also be interested in knowing if our sales are coming from plumbers, insurance agents, insurance brokers, property managers, or our digital marketing efforts. (Yes, you can figure out how to work these into your CRM, even though they aren’t a client referrer). This helps to identify where to spend money, when to hire the next sales rep, and where the gaps are in your book of business.

Number of Jobs Referred Total

Depending on when your CRM was put into practice, you may not be able to determine the total number of jobs someone has sent to you over time. But this information certainly becomes incredibly valuable as time goes on. If I have had my CRM in place for two years, and I can see a client has referred 24 jobs to me during this time, I know they are someone I need my sales team maintaining a good working relationship with. This number becomes most valuable, however, when I compare it to our next data point.

Number of Jobs Referred this Year

The “this year” part of this concept can be flexible. Maybe you want to look at a rolling 12 months or by quarter. The goal is to get a look at the current referrals from the client. Let’s take the same number from above—24 jobs over two years. If I see that 20 of those jobs were from last year and only four of them from this year, I’m going to have questions. A solid sales rep will see this trend as well and be ready to explain it. Maybe 18 of the 20 jobs from last year were individual units in a high-rise after a flood. Maybe this person switched roles and now has less opportunity to refer. Or maybe we messed up and are working on gaining back their trust. This would then lead me to look at the time since the last activity.

Time Since Last Activity

Different CRMs may call this slightly different things, but what you are looking for is how often your company interacts with the client. Using the above example, if you have only received four jobs this year and no one has visited the client since last December, that may explain why you see less work! However, if you see that you visited them recently, then the sales rep and their manager should probably have a different discussion about how the relationship is going.

Dollars Total and Dollars Year to Date

It is still sales, folks; we still need dollars. (Some of you may be surprised that I waited this long to mention money!) Combine this data with the job count data and you may see what size job this client may be able to refer. If there are less jobs in total but the dollars are high, then I’d suggest this person is a precious relationship, because when they call, it’s likely to be for a substantial-sized project. 

Comparing total dollars with year-to-date dollars can be a great conversation starter for a salesperson to have with their client. By looking at the data, a sales rep can dive into questions about why the referrals have changed or aren’t coming in at all. Asking these questions may make your sales team uncomfortable. They don’t like to rock the boat. But strong sales reps who build good relationships have earned the right to ask these questions! 

People like to be nice. They may not be giving you work because they have a family member who is a contractor, and they just kick jobs to them. Great—by asking good questions based on data, you would find this out. And maybe you stop by less often and shift some of that attention to a stronger prospect. You don’t write them off, but they basically told you that you aren’t going to be their first call, so they shouldn’t be yours either. 

There is so much more data in our CRMs, but like I said, these are the things that I start sales reporting with. Sales managers will then work in more or less data as they look for specific trends. Their goal will be to get themselves and their sales team to be able to figure out the questions that the data prompts. 

These quick data points can help guide a sales rep when they may feel a little lost about who to go visit. They should also drive some good questions or conversations with clients, by using the data to figure out how to find the next great referral relationship!