Making the Number: How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance [Hardcover]

Greg Alexander (Author), Aaron Bartels (Author), Mike Drapeau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 16, 2008

The essential tool kit to achieve breakthrough sales performance improvements.

Numbers don’t lie: 40 percent of all salespeople miss their targets each year. How can sales managers ensure their teams are doing everything possible? The key lies in benchmarking, which is not new for finance or manufacturing but rarely gets applied to sales. Making the Number will teach executives to embrace data-driven decision making and rely less on gut instinct.

Comparing a sales force to those of relevant peers leads to many opportunities to improve performance. The authors take readers through their five-step methodology for sales benchmarking, showing how to select metrics; gather, compute, and compare internal and external data; and then actually use the data.

Making the Number includes case studies of sales benchmarking in action. For example, find out how Discover Financial Services plays David to the Goliaths of MasterCard and Visa.

Whether you’re a sales rep, a manager, or a CEO, this book will show you a better way to make your number.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Greg Alexander, coauthor of Topgrading for Sales, is the cofounder and CEO of Sales Benchmark Index. He is also president of the Atlanta chapter of Sales & Marketing Executives International and was named Sales and Marketing magazine’s 2004 sales manager of the year.

Aaron Bartels and Mike Drapeau are cofounders and Executive Vice Presidents of Sales Benchmark Index.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (October 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591842174
• ISBN-13: 978-1591842170
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,171,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sales Benchmarking Not In Need of Corporate Propaganda, December 20, 2009

By 

Serge J. Van Steenkiste (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Making the Number: How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance (Hardcover)

Greg Alexander, Aaron Bartels, and Mike Drapeau oversell their company through their book about sales benchmarking to the annoyance of their audience. They implausibly claim that they alone have developed what they call a complete taxonomy for sales benchmarking (p. 74). Furthermore, Messrs. Alexander, Bartels, and Drapeau seem to give the impression that salespeople are not held accountable unlike the other functions within a company. Corporate America will probably disagree with this statement. In addition, the examples provided are of limited use because of their generality. Finally, the authors sometimes contradict themselves. For example, they recognize that "benchmarking's applicability to the sales profession ... is still undetermined (p. 204)." Four pages later, readers get the advice: "Play the odds and bet on something predictable, dependable, and proven - sales benchmarking (p. 208)." Another four pages down in the same chapter, readers can read to their amazement: "Today ... sales benchmarking is rarely deployed (p. 212)." To summarize, the book under review is another example of a business book that could be reduced to a 10-page article to be read in a business publication.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Science and Art, February 12, 2009

By 

Lee H. Cullom (Atlanta, Ga United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Making the Number: How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance (Hardcover)

Ok, let's face it everyone, most business books are total garbage. As a matter of fact, this is the first review I have ever written for a business book, because I usually want to forget the grueling experience. Making the number is flotsam in a sea of garbage. :)

First, let me say this. Because this book is about the science of sales and not the art, it is not peppered with anecdotes that keep you interested. This is more of a well-researched textbook, so prepare your mind for the work.

A common theme touched by making the number (and the one that held my attention) throughout the book is the art of sales vs. the science of sales. I've read many enjoyable books on the art of the deal (most recently the little red book), but this is the first memorable book on the science of sales improvement.

The methodology presented is straightforward, practical and actionable. Here are a couple of instances:

- Metric Identification - For those who are antsy (like me) and want some meat quickly, it's worth flipping to this chapter.
- Compare and Contrast - The explanations of statistical interpretation are so clear and crisp that I wished the authors could have been my business statistics professors in college.

Bottom Line - I believe that making the number will help me and my reps make mine a little bit more consistently.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Innovative advice on improving sales, April 27, 2009

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Making the Number: How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance (Hardcover)

Forget any fears of math or statistics that may still linger from your days in school. Sales benchmarking is a powerful tool that requires much less math and IT than you might expect. It yields hard numbers that show precisely how well you are competing, what gaps you need to close, how to create more value for your customers and how to improve your sales team's results. Greg Alexander, Aaron Bartels and Mike Drapeau provide a very readable explanation of what kind of tool sales benchmarking is, how to prepare to implement it, how to use it for fun and profit, and how to overcome common implementation difficulties. Although the authors are sales benchmarking consultants, their book does not read like self-promotion. getAbstract finds that they provide solid, helpful information as they explain the practical uses of sales benchmarking.