Category Descriptions Category Description Possible Metrics Baseline Where metrics lack for determining objectives the initiative provided a way to benchmark current state of metrics ID: 537149
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Slide1
Doomed Project Predictor
– Category Descriptions
Category
Description
Possible Metrics
Baseline
Where metrics lack for determining objectives, the initiative provided a way to benchmark current state.
# of metrics
baselined
for future improvement comparison
Brand
Initiative made your company more attractive to clients or candidates.
Increased hire rate
Buyer/Market
Initiative helped you to better understand your markets or buyers.
Increase in buyer/market
intel
Deliverables
The initiative provided usable, improvable, customized artifacts and tools that are actively used and adapted.
# of actively used new tools
Average # of iterations of artifacts
Methods
Your teams learned new agile initiative methods in areas such as discovery, root cause diagnosis, analysis, presentation, project management, strategy development, change management.
% of SFE team using new methods
Decrease in time to results
Higher initiative effectiveness
Objectives
The measurable goals of the initiative. What is expected in terms of improvement after initiative completion. Usually financially related.
Decrease sales cycle time by 37%
48% higher win rate
35% shorter ramp time
Roadmap
The initiative provided a workable roadmap of continued sales force effectiveness improvement projects.
# of Planned or in-flight projects from the roadmap
Self-sufficiency
The initiative transferred knowledge to your teams to continue active use and improvement of whatever was implemented.
Initiative adoption rate
# of initiative improvement cycles
Skills
The initiative
added new skills to the Sales or Marketing teams and these skills are being used.
# of new skills
% of team observed using new skillsSlide2
Doomed
Project Predictor – Hank’s Results
Hank’s company engaged a firm to help
with Onboarding of new hire Sales Reps. After 4 months for discovery, design and implementation, they’ve used it for a year. Hank inspected the initiative with this tool to give an account to Victor.
Category
Hank’s Situation
Success?
Baseline
Hank had some anecdotal info on ramp time to full quota for sales reps. This initiative helped his company put in place the mechanism to measure ramp time starting with the slew of new hires they had over the past year.
Brand
Being able to tell new-hire candidates that there was a robust onboarding program drew more interest than usual.
Buyer/Market
When designing the necessary onboarding learning, Hank realized they were missing “buyer process” education.
Deliverables
Major deliverables included a listing of learning modules and their descriptions and a tool for Sales Managers to use in managing the onboarding of new hires. Also, recommendations for improving the LMS and ATS tools.
Methods
All involved with the project learned and adopted a leaner version of a project plan. As well, change management tips were gleaned from the consulting firm along with emerging-practice discovery methods.
Objectives
Two main objectives were to: 1) decrease ramp time of new Sales Reps so that revenue gains would be seen earlier; and 2) get the Sales Managers to take more accountability in onboarding new Sales Reps. For #1, they couldn’t tell because there was no baseline for ramp time. For #2, they are only now starting to see an improvement in SMs.
Roadmap
As part of the initiative, the SFE consultants suggested further improvements to the Sales Force that would enhance the effectiveness of the Onboarding – like a Sales Management Coaching Framework and Hiring/Recruiting process.
Self-sufficiency
Hank’s team was trained on the use of the onboarding process and tools, but did not receive enough continued training for knowing how to implement other improvement initiatives without assistance.
Skills
Hank’s HR team got new skills in effective onboarding programs, the Sales Managers learned how to better manage the onboarding
of new hires, and the new hires (and veterans who chose to do so) learned new sales skills that the tenured sales force was never exposed to.
Slide3
Why financial returns are deceiving
Short-term financial gains from an improvement initiative are great. But beware…
There may have been an uptick in productivity of the sales force because they sense danger due to attention on them from this sales-directed initiative.
The financial gains may not be related to the improvement, but to other factors> ensure you find the cause of gains.
If the initiative was announced to the market, there may have been in initial spike of interest that converted to deals.Slide4
Should you bail on an initiative?
On in-flight initiatives, it’s better to stop it early (before design begins) if things don’t look good.
Use this Doomed Project Predictor to see if you can expect more than just objectives being met. If not, call it quits.
Determine if the initiative is heavily tied to some political battle – if so, it may not be the best for your company or for your own credibility.
Are there other initiatives that are or will be in-flight with this one? Will the other initiative keep needed attention and resources from this initiative? Probably a good idea to postpone this one.Slide5
One simple value-proving exercise
Sales needs HR’s help, but doesn’t always see the value of HR. Try this exercise:
Calculate the cost of a sales
mis
-hire.
Use this calculator
.
Show the Sales Leadership how much a bad hire costs.
Get the Sales Leader’s commitment to fix this problem.
Contact SBI for help.