March 2004              return to the newsletter contents page

New Study Helps Distributors Gauge the Effectiveness of Their Sales Force

A new study by The YPS Group Inc. and Progressive Distributor magazine can help distributors determine how well their sales forces compare to their competitors. The study asked industrial distribution executives to rate how well their sales forces execute a core set of 44 sales best practices and also asked how effective each of the practices could be if executed extremely well.

The study discovered that fully 99 percent of the respondents believe they can achieve substantially greater results by improving the quality of execution of each of the 44 best practices. By reading results of the study, distributors can compare how well their sales staffs perform vs. standard benchmarks.

“You don’t become the best sales rep or sales team simply by beating your chest and declaring it as fact,” said Todd Youngblood of The YPS Group in Atlanta, author of the Sales Best Practices Benchmarking Assessment. “You must measure yourself against objective standards for performance of all critical sales activities that lead to greater revenue. Then you must implement specific actions to address your weaknesses.”

“The Sales Best Practices Benchmarking Assessment is a valuable tool that every distributor should utilize,” said Rich Vurva, editor of Progressive Distributor. “The report’s results provide distributors with a unique set of tools to measure and continuously improve the effectiveness and performance of their sales teams.”

Download the free executive summary of “Sales Best Practices Benchmarking Assessment” at www.progressivedistributor.com. The complete study is available for $75 at www.ypsgroup.com/sbpba_report.htm. Purchase it online or by fax and receive a Report of Results in portable document file (.pdf) format. It includes extensive recommendations as well as a detailed road map for implementing a Sales Excellence Council and other initiatives to grow sales.