Sales Success through a Customized “Business Cockpit” Situation In a tougher business environment, the family-owned medium-sized company, with 2,000 employees and a turnover of € 580 million, ran into serious difficulties. Shareholders became wary of sinking margins and banks were reluctant to grant loans for necessary investments. MFB Resultants was mandated to develop a “Business Cockpit” to enable the company’s sales force to react quickly to market changes and to convince creditors and shareholders of the effectiveness and sustainability of the company’s sales machine. Procedure Collecting and Analyzing Key Metrics for Sales Success Based on already existing software tools, key data on sales, products and services, plants, regions and customers, on the one hand, and turnover, costs and earnings, on the other hand, were incorporated into a sales earnings matrix. Two questions stood in the foreground: (1) How much profit is made from which products/services, in which markets, with which customers? (2) How can the whole sales organization be made more flexible, profitable and efficient? To be able to better control and analyze sales effectiveness, sales and marketing managers as well as company directors became access to detailed data. Reaching the Target in 8 Weeks MFB Resultants completed the first project phase on time and within budget. After starting the project, the “Business Cockpit” was used only 8 weeks later. For the first time, the company management was able to systematically collect and analyze sales metrics. Parallel to the implementation, MFB Resultants began training users. In workshops and trainings, approximately 50 employees from sales, marketing and logistics learned how to maintain and use the new controlling system in their daily work. Results Improved Revenues and Earnings The successful implementation of the “Business Cockpit” was responsible for tracking and eliminating the weak spots in the company’s selling function. The analysis of accurate data allowed optimizing tools and procedures. By calculating and interpreting win rates, revenue, relative market share and contribution margins among customer segments, the management was able to identify high-value customers and “isolate” clients with “bad revenue”. The whole sales organization was streamlined and rearranged around key accounts. Already one year after the implementation of the “Business Cockpit”, the sales division successfully increased turnover by 12%. Earnings were up 15% and overall selling costs could be decreased by 20%. In a second step, the company plans the online accessibility of the system.