Montag, 3. Juli 2006

Salescontrolling and Strategy

The Management Academy Munich found that german Manager have a lack in Strategy. And let me add: not only the german Managers!

If you look at aspects like challenges for companies, critical success factors, objectives etc. you will find in german companies a big difference between the reality of internal processes and the communicated targets of the companies.

54 Percent think, that the most important success factor is focussing on customer - what ever is ment by this. 43 % need high qualified employees and only 28 % think, that Management and objectives and controlling is necessary for customer success.

The measurement for objectives and controlling is normally financially driven and not really related to real customer behaviour and feedback.

Our opinion is, that this is because it is more difficult to get those customer related information. It is much easier to have the financial data and to define akind of Balanced Score Card on those figures. This is OK if you already have all customers you want. If you want to win new customers you have to learn what are the needs of those. You can not find out by analyzing the financial results of a specific product or sales unit or by looking at their salesproductivity. This will be helpful but is not the only thing.

You have to collect non financial and transactional data, which give you the base for figures. These figures have to point out the needs, potential customer have and how there buying behaviour is today. Then you can paint the whole picture of your strategy by taking those needs, behaviours, internal processes and products in account. You will see what has to be changed!