Being an Account Executive (A sales representative who runs a full new business sales cycle) can be very chaotic, especially in companies with high deal numbers, when I was an AE, I sometimes had to juggle 25-35 deals at any given time, add on top the inbound leads plus outreach most AEs have to do.
It's key to set up a good process to manage this, the way I dealt with it was to set up a dashboard that would guide me through my day and help me prioritize my work items. I would open this dashboard every morning and know how to get on with my day.
When working in RevOps, you can help your AEs by building this dashboard and providing them with an overview of how to use it. In this article, I will go through which data points I have found useful, and hopefully serve as inspiration, should you decide to build this dashboard for your sales team.
Data points:
My Deals:
Getting the hang of deals and the next steps is the first data point I would start with, my priority would be to work on those that would close within the month (modify this for the quarter if you have fewer deals and longer sales cycles).
Keeping good track of the next steps and when they should be done was the best way for me to stay on top of my deals. A report on the dashboard would look something like this:
Having this overview helped me follow up accordingly and make sure none of my deals were slipping through the cracks. Another advantage of this was that my manager always would have a rough idea of the next steps and when they would happen, this made the weekly 1/1s a bit more effective, and the manager could ask for details about a specific next step if needed.
My Leads:
In this section, I would have two specific reports:
My new leads: This is where all my new leads are which have been assigned to me, and need processing. The goal is to keep this report empty, and it should be checked and processed 2-3 times a day to make sure the average response time stays within a few hours during work hours.
My Active Leads: This is where I can see all my leads that are active in either a product trial, or it could be website visits. This will take a bit of setup, analysis, and alignment to get up and running, but active leads or PQL (Product-qualified leads) can be a game changer for AEs.
Deals stuck:
The goal here is to understand if some deals are stuck in a stage longer than they should be, for this you need an analysis on the company level, how long deals are on average staying in a specific stage, and then flag these deals if they are staying above average. Of course, deals can stay in a stage longer than average, but it is good to be aware if they are, and also to understand if there is a valid reason for it.
Data cleaning:
Here is the data on key data an AE needs to be on top of, this can vary, but here are some examples of data points that can be put here:
- Close date in the past.
- Close date in near future but deal is in early stages.
- Deals that have progressed to a certain stage without line items or an amount.
- Deals with no associated company or contact.
Overall numbers and goals:
Here you can add how much the rep has closed on a yearly basis, which could also be divided by type (new business, renewals, upsells). on top of this, you can add individual or team goals so that the rep can keep a tab on how the numbers are progressing.
Last Thoughts:
Setting up this dashboard and driving your team to use and benefit from it, can also result in more standardized process rigor so that revenue leakage is being reduced, and a more clear pipeline for forecasting purposes.
Make sure to listen to your sales reps if they have any suggestions for improvements, as they will be working with the dashboard daily and can come up with new ideas for data points to capture.
If you read this far, thank you, and I hope you found the article useful!
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