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 Numberwill 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 Numberincludes 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.

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.