Examples are:

• Annual physical examination to evaluate the state of your personal health
• Preventative automobile servicing and diagnosis at various mileage intervals
• Annual home appliance inspections to ensure small problems do not turn into large problems through neglect (i.e. air conditioner maintenance servicing)
• Year end analysis of your investment portfolios to ensure alignment with new investment strategies
• Annual marketing plans developed based on the latest analysis and evolving market conditions

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All these activities are taken for granted and for the most part ingrained in our annual personal or business activities. Then why is it that audits or checkups of sales departments rarely occur in a regularly planned annual cycle at most companies?

Do you know:

• How effective are your sales managers at managing and developing their subordinates?
• Is the latest CRM tool your company heavily invested in being utilized to its fullest extent by your sales personnel?
• Are the training programs currently utilized providing the changes necessary to elevate your sales managers and sales reps to a new level?
• How well prepared are sales reps prior to calls?
• What percentage of sales reps take notes during calls?
• Is all pertinent customer information captured, categorized and utilized to increase sales opportunities?

Do you have accurate and precise answers to the above questions?

These are but a few relevant and essential questions you need answers annually, in order to assess how best to deploy, train and utilize your most valuable company asset.

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The sales organization:

Advantages of an annual sales audit – understanding the current state of the company's sales organization

• Identification of existing competencies
• Strengths/ weaknesses of the personnel, systems, programs
• Benchmarking for future comparison and evaluation
• Activities based on facts, not subjective interpretations
• Focus on specific improvement opportunities, deploying resources where most needed, resulting in reduced activities and investment costs