Time Generating Reports

[webgeek]

Just wondering, from those sales managers who participate in this thread....

How much time do you spend each week in compiling the data and reports necessary for team meetings, board meeting, management meetings and 1 to 1's with staff?

In previous discussions with sales managers at mid-sized companies, I've found the average to be in excess of 1 day per month, often 1/2 day per week, but wondered if the same was true with smaller companies...

 

[Scott@KarmaContent]

I ran sales teams up to about two years ago, from my experience it's much less than what you are quoting. The sectors were recruitment and medical/dental sales and and I'd say no more than half a day per month. Both companies would be classed as SME.

I don't think it's necessarily a small/large company thing, it's more what the company sells and how it sells it. The medical sales company I worked for sold a handful of high value (£xxxx+) pieces of specialist equipment to four main markets: Dental, Veterinary, Podiatry and Laboratory. Everything was relatively straightforward so there is only so much reporting and analysis you needed to do. If we'd have been a general medical supplies distributor with a catalogue of thousands of products selling to a range of markets, then more reporting and analysis is viable and probably necessary to stay ahead of the game.

From experience too, some companies do far too many reports. One company I worked for brought in a whole new reporting pack that took us from a few hours per month reporting to at least a couple of days. The new reports were completely useless and nobody probably ever looked at them. We had to do them apparently because we had a new operations manager who 'liked spreadsheets'. Sigh.

 

[webgeek]

Thanks a lot for that Scott!

I'm thinking it has a lot to do with the culture and managing director. In a prior life, as marketing manager for an accountancy training provider, we spent a minimum of a half-day per month generating reports for board/management meetings. In that case the MD was also an accountant, so there was considerable amount of time turning relatively straightforward data into the desired format (as columnar data) and then time in turning that data into a chart/graph of the type they desired.

I guess it also depends on how many KPI's you're reporting on, and how much information is being collected for curiosity sake, not because it drives business decisions. I've seen some fly by the seat of their pants and others have the KPI's honed to near perfection.

In most of the cases I've seen, the breakpoint looks to be about 50-75 employees. A company smaller than that can get away with not having a lot of processes, but one larger is finding the pain of not having those processes and starts putting them in place, particularly KPI's that are forward looking rather than purely reactive.