B2B sales professionals recognize gaps between a client’s desired and current state.
So why do sales leaders often skip the diagnostic part when diagnosing sales team performance issues and instead focus solely on the results versus quota at the end of the year?
It’s easy to assume it’s the salesperson’s fault if they don’t make their number for the year or x number of consecutive quarters.
There’s a better way to diagnose sales performance issues sooner rather than later with the following three questions:
Question 1: Can the proper sales performance metrics be tracked, visible, and managed?
If all you have is results, you only have lagging metrics. Lagging metrics are like looking at the scoreboard for the entire game while your team manages the game themselves.
It would help if you also had leading and leaning metrics to provide insight far ahead of results. Sample metrics could include the number of proposals, average deal size, sales cycle length, number of demos or white-boarding sessions, etc. Tracked, visible, and managed in that order.
Question 2: Are sales leaders coaching a material portion of their time?
If your answer is yes, you may be mistaken, as most sales leaders readily admit they need to spend more time coaching their people. For the record, spending time with salespeople is not the same as coaching salespeople. Applying a typical sports coaching example, 70% of coaching happens before, 10% during, and 20% after the game.
If sales leaders manage eight or more salespeople, they need more time to coach effectively. In our experience, the ideal sales rep-to-manager ratio is 5 to 1 or 6 to 1.
Question 3: Has the salesperson been in their role for over two years?
Developing sales competencies in B2B sales takes time, particularly when hiring from outside the industry or early in a career. By the end of year two, new salespeople are no longer new and should be on track to hit their quarterly or annual goals.
Here’s a graphic that summarizes the three questions:
Diagnosing and Fixing sales performance issues is simple but not easy.
The common denominator to improving sales performance is the front-line sales manager.
If the right metrics, process, and coaching are in place, new hires will flush out quickly, and sales managers will be able to improve the performance of sales reps in the middle of the pack.
Apply the principles outlined in this post, and you’ll be able to diagnose the real issues to improve your organization’s sales performance.