There’s an old saying, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” It’s a play on words and refers to the fact that accurate data can be manipulated to make less-than-accurate claims.
Here’s an example: A sales rep closes 10 deals in January. On February 1st, he becomes ill and is forced to spend the next two weeks at home, recovering. He’s back in the office on February 15th and is able to close five more deals before the month ends.
In March, the sales rep maintains perfect health and matches his January sales total. So, this sales rep could say he doubled his sales in March. After all, he closed 10 deals that month, compared to just 5 the month before. But it’s not a very accurate statement.
The point: how you present your sales performance metrics matters.
Unfortunately, sales metrics get misunderstood all the time. It’s not that anyone is trying to be deceptive. They’re just using an inadequate presentation method. Condensing sales metrics into a palatable format is time-consuming and difficult. Tables and screen-grabs are hard to digest and easily misunderstood.
By presenting your sales metrics through video, you eliminate these roadblocks and create a resource that clarifies data, minimizes confusion, and ensures metrics are understood by key stakeholders.
Here’s how it’s done.
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The old way of presenting sales metrics
Meet Jim. He’s been tasked with collecting his department’s sales metrics and presenting it to the rest of the team in a digestible way.
Jim spends an entire day creating pivot tables in Microsoft Excel and gathering screenshots from inside his team’s sales software. He spends another day dumping all of this information into a poorly-designed PowerPoint presentation which he distributes via email.
Unfortunately, the data is pretty dense, so Jim spends a third day fielding questions and sending lengthy emails he hopes will bring clarity to the information.
They don’t.
It’s now Thursday and Jim finds himself in a meeting with the sales managers. The objective? Jim has to explain to his colleagues what each metric means. At the end of the meeting, so-and-so sales manager asks, “Can you meet with the CEO, too? He’d like to see this.”
Want to guess how Jim spends his Friday?
Jim is a good employee. And his colleagues and bosses aren’t stupid. The problem is Jim’s communication method. The way he’s presenting his team’s sales metrics is flawed in several important ways.
Time-consuming
Presenting sales metrics is a time-consuming process. There are multiple people to inform and each of them needs the data for a different reason.
Sales reps want to know about individual performance, while sales managers care more about whether their department as a whole is matching projections. Company executives want context that helps them understand metrics with an eye toward big-picture decision-making.
A spreadsheet gives very little context, so Jim wastes a lot of time making sure everyone understands the data so they can use it for their purposes.
Confusing
It’s difficult to explain complex sales metrics through spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and emails. Trying often leads to misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions, both of which derail executive decision-making processes and prohibit team action
There’s no way to ensure the data Jim shares is actually digested by key stakeholders. People are busy. Sales metrics can be confusing. When choosing between a critical task and muddling through sales data, most people will choose the former.
Difficult to compare
Jim’s team sometimes needs to compare sales metrics over time.
But it’s nearly impossible to compare complex spreadsheets or lengthy PowerPoints side-by-side. The information required to do so is too complicated and scattered. Because of this, stakeholders don’t have the clarity they need to make decisions with confidence.
Put simply, the “standard” way of presenting sales performance metrics is labor-intensive and unreliable.
The future: video and sales metrics
How should Jim have shared his company’s sales metrics? With video. There are a number of benefits to presenting sales metrics this way.
Videos are easy to consume
A full 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read text. It’s not a stretch to think the reps and sales managers in your company feel the same.
Why is this? Visuals, movement and pacing make video one of the most engaging types of content. Animations help you easily underscore key points. And animated graphs and charts bring your metrics to life.
Videos are also more memorable than their text-based counterparts. Studies show that the average person retains 95% of the information they consume through video, compared to just 10% when they read it in text. That’s a huge difference.
Finally, the video-creation process itself helps keep your information clear and concise. This is because video is a time-restricted format with limited space for words. When you plan a video, you have to think hard about what to include and let anything extraneous fall away.
Pro tip: Keep your videos on point by starting with a professionally-designed template. Biteable Teams users have access to hundreds of video templates, which they can use an unlimited amount of times.
Videos can be quickly edited for different audiences
As we mentioned earlier, people on your sales team have different priorities when it comes to key sales metrics. One way to satisfy everyone is to create separate reports that each focus on different data sets.
This is time-consuming with a spreadsheet, but easy to do with video.
You could, for example, create one “master” video that includes all relevant sales metrics. You could then duplicate it multiple times and edit each copy for a different type of viewer.
Videos for sales reps can focus on individual metrics like calls made, meetings scheduled, and deals closed. Videos for sales managers can focus on team metrics like average length of sales cycle and total opportunities. And videos for executives can focus on how sales department performance impacts the company’s bottom line.
Videos offer a single point of truth
One of the best things about videos is that they’re easily updatable, giving sales departments a single point of truth to work from.
When you create a video with Biteable Teams, you get a single link, which you can send to your team or post in a designated place on your company intranet.
If you discover a mistake in your metrics or you realize you need to add more information, log back into Biteable Teams and make the necessary changes to your video. The original link you sent around will point to this newly-updated version.
When team members are ready to view your updated video, they’ll click the original link you sent them. Voila, a single point of truth, which will help keep your team on the same page.
Videos are easily trackable
Who’s watching your sales metrics videos? How many of these people watched the whole thing? And at what point did most viewers bail?
Video is trackable in a way spreadsheets aren’t. You’ll never again have to ask, “Hey, Bob, did you see the latest sales team metrics?”. Simply log into your Biteable Teams dashboard and view your video analytics.
This feature will also help you create better, more compelling videos on a regular basis. By analyzing video engagement, you’ll learn what your team responds to best.
Elevate your sales metrics with Biteable Teams
Performance metrics are essential to the success of your sales department. But the way you present them to your team is equally important.
The old-school approach often results in misunderstandings and inaccurate assumptions. This is because text-based communication is usually less clear and less engaging than other forms of communication — not to mention more time-consuming.
For many sales departments, video is the answer.
By creating sales metrics videos with Biteable Teams, you can convey your information in clear and succinct ways that elevate your metrics.
Hundreds of video templates and brandable scenes take the guesswork out of video making. A collaborative, easy-to-use platform means anyone can make a video in minutes — no experience required.