Analyzing Organizational Capacity

Analyzing Capacity within a business organization can be one of the most challenging of the sales training foundational competencies. The reason is because a positive cash flow from sales revenue generated by a high performance sales force ensures that the company can afford to risk making strategic market decisions. It needs to be able to service and deliver quality products that can be sold to grow the business. What is the function of Business Capacity?

Business capacity involves analyzing, monitoring, measuring, evaluating, managing, and planning all functions of the company for financial, statistical, and behavioral data. This process allows business leaders to clearly identify how to grow and sustain the health of the organization. This includes: technological, operational and human performance. You can perform activities that align and maximize capacity measurements and improvements within any part of the organization.

According to the ASTD World Class Selling, the definition of "Analyzing Organizational Capacity is to: "Assess and weigh competing requirements against available resources to minimize risk, ensure quality deliverables, and balance capabilities with capacity."

Key actions would include:

1. Assessing resources accurately

2. Balancing risk with goal achievement when determining next steps

Should I integrate the capacity of my SALES or TRAINING department?

Absolutely! It is extremely valuable for you to understand the financial, operational and human requirements and costs to run your training department. As a Sales or Talent Management Sales Trainer, you are responsible for the knowledge management of the sales team and its' performance outcomes. The health of your own training department is vulnerable to business capacity shifts and changes. The better you understand how analyzing capacity works the better your departmental efforts will be measured for your own success as a Trainer!

How does this relate to Sales Training?

Your sales team's performance in any given month will reflect the increases or decreases in the "capacity" to which the organization can utilize internal or external resources. In this case, we are talking about the companies' ability to access financial resources that come from new and existing sales revenue. Sales revenue is the anchor of life for all business, The company will suffer in capacity when a sales organization is not strong. The business must be able to "afford" to adapt constant change and if it cannot do that without strong sales leadership, revenue increase and consistent sales productivity. If the organization be able to adapt to capacity changes or sustainability is threatened.