Most industries have information about overall market size and general trends. Oilfield services are no different; the Baker Hughes Rig Count and various Spears Reports indicate macro market movement. From a sales management perspective, they are helpful for long-term strategic plans such as team size, locations, and general sales activities. Providing tactical guidance to your team takes another level of market detail and a method for analyzing the data. The US Land sales environment is lucky to have a magical tool: RigData Location Information. This report, now owned by Enervus, is a weekly summary of all the rigs operating that includes:

Rig location
Operator
Well depth
Trajectory
10-15 other dimensions.

If your business is tied to drilling, which most of the oilfield services industry in the US is, this report effectively provides the information required to fully understand the opportunity for your products and services. If you harness the data in a report like the one described below, it can be a powerful tool to guide your sales efforts, understand market share, and recognize changes in the market that could affect your business.

Background

In 2016, Weatherford moved me “temporarily” from product line management to sales. It struck me that each sales professional was judged on the same metric, total sales. It struck me that market share with the assigned accounts be a better measurement of success? Weatherford had always subscribed to the RigData location report, and they distributed it in the .pdf format to the sales teams each week. I requested the excel version and developed a model to determine which team members were most successful based on their market share, not just the absolute value of their sales.

Fast forward to mid-2017, I found myself the sales manager for completions at Rubicon. I then implemented and expanded on the reports to successfully aid the team. Disclaimer: The team I had was excellent and would have been successful without my management. My goal as manager was to support the team by sharing technical and market information. Combining the RigData information, specifics about the team, and information gathered about each account into a tool for understanding the market, team performance, and focus points for future success. The report also helps to develop overall strategy, communicating with management, and product management discussions with the engineering team. The goal of this series of articles is to:

• Explain how to put the data into a format that is easy to update and use

• How to the data can bring value to your sales team

• How to use the data to manage up

• How the data can help guide product decisions

Tools

The tools needed to create these reports are the Enervus RigData report and Microsoft Excel. Within Excel, the VLOOKUP & Pivot Table functionality enables the easy analysis and manipulation of the data.

Pivot Tableable

The RigData report includes detailed information about every rig operating in the US. The first step of this process is to ensure the data is in a format useable by a pivot table or is Pivot Tableable. The Pivot Table function uses column headings to organize the data, all columns must have a heading title. Based on my memory of the report, it will include the following headings:

The second step is to eliminate any blanks in the data. The data contains a wealth of information to develop a detailed picture of the US oilfield market. Each one of the columns of data can help the team understand their opportunities. For purposes of this article, I will use the simplified table below with the columns that I found most important when communicating with my team.

Pivot Table Basics

To create a Pivot Table, you select the data (along with the column headings) you want to manipulate the select Insert --> Insert Pivot Table. A dialog box will open up and ask to verify the data table selected and where to place the pivot table. I always follow the default, which is to create a new tab for the Pivot.

Using the Field List along the right-hand side of the screen, you can manipulate the format of the table. As seen, each column heading becomes a field in the report. From the field list, each column of data can move into four different sections: Filter, Row, Column, or Value.

Row

Moving a field to the row section displays a list of the unique information from the associated column. For instance, if we move "Operator" into the row section, a list of the operators is displayed. Only the unique cells are listed, e.g. Pioneer is only shown once even though there are 3 rows of Pioneer data. Adding another field under "Operator" displays the unique data from that column, or field, for each operator.

Column

The column area does the same as the Row however, the information is organized across the columns.

Values

The Values area places numbers related to each row/column into the table. If the field contains numbers they can be summed, averaged, etc depending on what is necessary for your report. If the field contains a list of information, it will provide the count of each data point.

Filter

Placing a field in the Filter section allows the entire data table to be filtered by the specific selection you’ve made in the filter.

This is just a primer on Pivot Tables. Manipulating the data is the best way to learn how this powerful tool can help you analyze your data.

Setting Up the Report

Additions to the Enervus Data

Enervus updates the locations report weekly. If not included, be sure to add a column to the left of the report, with the title "date", and then enter the date of the report in each row. Adding the date will allow you to add future week's data to the end of the table, allowing you to monitor trends.

Team/Account Specific Data

The first pivot table to create is a simple list of all the operators. I typically take this list, copy it, and paste it into another worksheet. In this worksheet, renamed Team Information, you can start to build a table of all your team-specific information, starting with the sales rep dedicated to each account.

Link the Tables

These two tables can be linked using VLOOKUP. The VLOOKUP function is a powerful tool. It reads the cell contents of one cell, finds the same content in the first column of a table, and returns the data from another column in the same row that matches the first cell content.

=VLOOKUP(Look Up Value, Table to search the first column of, # of the column to return, FALSE)

In this instance, you can look up the operator, search the Team information table, and return the sales professional associated with the account. See the results below:

You can see the sales professional column has been added and the proper team member is associated with each operator.

When the following week’s report arrives, you can add a column into the left hand side with the new date and then paste the data below the report you’ve created.

With the dates in you can drop the date into the column field and see how the market is changing for the team.

What next?

By linking your team to the actual market data, you can now sort the information by sales professional. It is a powerful tool, especially if you keep track of the reports over time. The detailed information about your customer's operations, the team's coverage of the customer, allow you to determine the top opportunities are for growth. When meeting individual team members, you can filter the information specific to them when discussing sales strategy.

When data is in a pivot table, it is easy to manipulate for your analysis. Here are a few examples:

Now that you have a report set up with linked information from the market and your team, the options are endless for presenting the data. In future articles, I'll share how this report will be helpful when:

Making decisions about the structure and account assignments
Talking to management about the team and opportunities for growth
Sharing information with the engineering team on the best track for product development

For more information on the RigData report that enables these tools, visit the RigData website located here:

Enervus RigData Report.

Managing Oilfield Sales with Data