The Growth and Performance Diagnostics Initiative: A Multi-Dimensional Framework for Sales Performance Analysis and Management

Often there is substantial disparity in sales performance across various units of an organization. It is crucial to model the effects of various drivers/inhibitors on sales performance, particularly those that can be acted upon, since insight into such drivers/inhibitors is essential for determining optimal actions for improving performance. We present a framework for sales performance diagnostics which focuses on: (1) modeling and quantifying the effects of various factors on multiple sales performance metrics to help identify actionable factors that can impact performance; and (2) providing scenario analysis and optimization capabilities to understand the effects of taking various actions on sales performance, as well as to suggest the best possible actions to achieve certain objectives given current constraints. We describe an implementation of this framework at IBM and provide examples of analyses to demonstrate how it can be used to support sales performance initiatives. [<i>Service Science</i>, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]