Make sure you're being judged on the objective performance metrics of your media sales CRM rather than an "eye test."
Retinoscopy at the School Travelling Ophthalmic Clinic, 1914. State Records New South Wales, Australia.

Well, it all began last night in Dayton, Ohio, with the play-in games, as they are known, which start off the NCAA basketball tournament. March Madness is here.

Lots of work went into selecting the “RIGHT” teams to be asked into the tournament by the NCAA selection committee. Committee members try to be as objective in their analysis as they can be by looking at schedules, RPI indexes, team stats, conference and non-conference schedules and results, plus so much more information so that they base those precious decisions on the actual facts as they see them.

Yet EVERYONE has their own opinion as to why a team didn’t get invited that should have. Which teams did that shouldn’t have? Which conference is the strongest and best and deserved more teams in than it got? How could the selection committee have been so blind, foolish, misguided, political, or just plain dumb?

And how do you REALLY QUANTIFY the over-used and rarely understood statement “They pass the EYE TEST"? You hear Digger Phelps and Dickie V use this term to explain why one team is in and another is not. That seems a bit subjective to me, though.

How is success defined if one is using the EYE TEST? More importantly, how does all of this relate to those of us in media sales or sales management?

My suggestion is that you not let your performance and success be based on a subjective interpretation like an “EYE TEST.” Make sure you’re being judged on actual objective performance metrics.  Discover what is expected, measured, and valued by your sales manager, and then track yourself working towards and hitting these metrics.

This is easy to do if you have the right tool built for this task. I am talking about a media-specific CRM, such as Efficio. A quality media-specific CRM can:

• Enable prioritization and categorization of accounts by revenue importance
• Enter and track pending and sales packages presented to clients in the revenue funnel
• Track aging and DSO to make sure you collect and get commissions for sales
• Communicate via eMarketing to contacts and agency personnel with key information
• Provide complete, concise, and transparent metrics and communication up the ladder
• Allow you to track all account activities by activity types with date and time stamps
• Communicate and share avail information when received across the cluster
• Automatically export all activities to Android and Smartphone calendar functions

Many, if not all, salespeople in media sales have grown up in the age of technology. They get how easy communicating and living their lives is with technology. Why would we not want that same connectivity and productivity available in our work lives?

By Chris Crawford, General Sales Manager, Efficio Solutions