What is sales controlling?
Sales controlling is the process of planning, measuring, and controlling sales goals. A company's survival in the market depends on its ability to generate business revenue in the long term. To achieve optimal results, sales controlling helps the sales force achieve higher and more profitable revenues. Sales controlling is the responsibility not only for the sales director but also sales representatives (commercialists) and the sales controller or analyst. The sales representative nurtures relationships with clients, is constantly in the field, sells products/services, negotiates purchasing terms, and ensures payment collection. On the other hand, the sales controller analyzes sales results, examines the profitability of products and customers, tracks and records sales activities, participates in creating sales plans, and ultimately creates reports that illustrate the sales team's results. Through shared responsibility and collaboration, a transparent sales controlling process is established, enabling higher revenues, market share growth, and overall company growth.
Why do companies implement sales controlling?
Sales controlling is an essential process in today's world for the success of sales and the sales sector. The sales team is constantly growing, the sales process is becoming more complex, new products are continuously being introduced, and new customers are emerging in the market that need to be targeted. This leads to the following problems:
- Duplication of sales activities
- The sales plan becomes increasingly complex and harder to develop
- Customers are not targeted correctly
- Company resources are spent on activities that do not contribute to sales
- Reports become overly detailed, making it difficult to discern the essential information
- A lot of time is spent on preliminary activities
Sales controlling improves the quality of work in the sales sector. The growth of the sales team requires detailed and efficient definition of sales goals, measurement of sales force performance, identification of deviations from the plan, and creation of an action plan to correct these deviations. For the sales team in the field to achieve revenue growth and company profitability, they need the support of sales controlling, which provides quality information from the "office" to aid decision-making.
What does sales controlling include?
- Sales plan: Defining sales goals, both financial and those related to the market and the sales process.
- Sales reports: Customized sets of reports tailored to the needs of the sales team.
- Tracking sales activities: To achieve sales goals, it is necessary to break down the stages of the sales process, measure activities in these stages, and optimize the conversion of activities. Proper management of the sales process involves tracking the quantity of sales activities as well as the quality of work with customers.
- Multidimensional sales analysis: Revenues should be viewed and analyzed in multiple ways to support various decisions. Sales controlling includes detailed tracking of revenues by dimensions such as products, brands, customers, sales channels, regions, markets, projects, salespeople, and similar categories.
- Tracking margins and revenue profitability
- Measuring and analyzing the impact of discounts on results
What are the benefits of sales controlling?
- Alignment with company strategy: A company with an established sales controlling system aligns the sales plan with the company's strategy, enabling long-term market growth.
- Transparency of sales results: Sales controlling, through its multidimensional analysis, shows the sales management which revenues are profitable for the company.
- Comprehensive view of sales potential: Sales controlling allows for a complete view of the sales potential in the market and enables the undertaking of sales activities to achieve that potential.
- Focus on effective activities: It directs the sales team towards effective activities (selling the right products to the right customers).
- Optimization of sales activity costs.
- Facilitated decision-making: It makes decision-making regarding sales easier.
- Easy data updating: Simplifies the monthly data updating process and the preparation of reports for monthly or quarterly sales meetings.