Using Mapping Software to Drive Accountability in Your Sales Force

A productive, proactive salesforce is a key to any business’s success. While much has been written about how to drive accountability in the workplace, ultimately keeping your sales staff motivated comes down to clear communication and effective use of data.

Using Data to Your Advantage: Understanding the Metrics

Various measurements can be used to track sales activity. None of them provides a complete, accurate picture, and each should be taken as a tool for understanding rather than as a bottom line indicator of success or failure. Commonly cited sales metrics include:

• Total sales dollars. This is your most basic measurement of sales activity. Its main drawback is that it doesn’t account for demographic differences between territories, and the fact that big-ticket sales may be more common in one region than another.


• Closing ratios. Closing ratios give you a good picture of an individual salesperson’s efficiency at generating and closing leads. However, they do not measure overall contribution, and can be skewed if an employee focuses on a few high-profile accounts rather than going after smaller, easier sales.


• Pipeline accuracy. Pipeline accuracy measures a salesperson’s ability to deliver on their promises. The ability to meet monthly sales projections is an indication of not only an employee’s ability to close a sale, but also of their understanding of their territory and its ongoing needs. It measures how well they can predict sales.

Clearly, a lot can be done with raw sales data. However, as good managers know, data alone doesn’t tell the whole story.

Complementing Sales Data with Business Mapping

The one thing left out of any purely data-based analysis of sales is territory mapping. Sales territories impact a business’s success in so many ways, yet they are rarely factored into sales metrics. That’s where MapBusinessOnline comes in. MBO includes a number of tools for sales territory mapping and accountability that will give you a clearer picture of how your team is working.

With MapBusinessOnline, sales managers can:

• Get an at-a-glace picture of demographics and trends in every territory they cover
• Reassign territories so individual sales associates have more opportunities to drive their numbers up
• Reassign staff so the most effective closers are positioned where they will be most effective
• Identify up-and-coming or underserved markets or accounts, and allocate resources accordingly

Ultimately, MapBusinessOnline makes raw sales data more meaningful through data visualization. When sales data is visualized, communication between management and sales is more efficient and accountability is improved.

Register for a Free Trial Today

Improving sales accountability is something even the most successful businesses struggle with over time. If you’re looking at numbers alone, you’re not getting the full picture of how and where your staff is working.

Sign up for a free trial and see how MapBusinessOnline can improve the accountability of your sales team. MBO features an easy-to-use visual interface that makes sense of raw sales data and helps identify who is underperforming, who is exceeding expectations and where additional resources are required. Get in touch to start your free 1-month trial today.