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Performance Management-How Your Sales Team Can Benefit

Guest post by: Stephen Blakesley

Article Overview: No one can benefit more from performance management than your sales team. Take this 3 pronged approach and achieve improved sales results immediately.

Performance Management-How Your Sales Team Can Benefit

According to Aberdeen Group, two-thirds (66%) of companies surveyed believe their sales growth is insufficient to meet corporate objectives. Among companies surveyed, Aberdeen Group assigned them to 3 distinct groups: Best-In-Class, Average and Laggards. The Best-In-Class were characterized by exceeding quotas by 6 percent, a 5.3% annual increase in deal size, 3.5% annual decrease in the sales cycle time. Industry averages were: Only 76% quota achievement, 0.2% increase in deal size and 2.2 % experience an increase, not a decrease, in cycle time. In the quota accomplishment area alone, there was a 32 percent difference between the Best and Average. Monetarily, too much to ignore. Bottom Line? Best-in-Class did a better job of managing the performance of their sales team.

Performance Management, whether speaking of sales or operations, is really all about accountability. The ultimate accountability in sales is wrapped up in the question; did you make your quota?

Achieving superior results in sales is not always dependent upon sales training. Other factors play major roles in an organization's results. Possibly the most important, if not the most important it is among the top three, strategies responsible for superior sales results.

Our belief is that Sales Performance Management should have a three-pronged approach. Those three areas of focus are:

Ø Sales Management Training

Ø Quota Accountability

Ø Compensation

Sales Management Training

Frequently, the problem with sales rests with the incompetency of the sales management group. All too often Sales Mangers are not managers at all, but rather, just good salespeople. Often those people have not the foggiest notion of competent sales management. They never had it when they were in sales and they never received any training or guidance when they moved in to a management role. They may be wanting but not having good management skills.

Quota Accomplishment

The problem here is often wanting to be liked. A sales mangers job is often a lonely job. It is especially lonely for the top salesperson made Sales Manager. One of the key attributes of a high-performing salesperson is his/her need for frequent interaction with people in a positive way.

Holding people accountable for results does not often "win friends and influence people." It requires holding people accountable and that, more times than not, requires assertiveness. Assertiveness is, on occasion, perceived as bossy or aggressive. None-the-less, it is a necessary part of the job and not necessarily suited to a sales behavior.

Compensation

All to frequently compensation gets caught up in thoughts and efforts about and toward motivation. Most good sales people I have know, and that would be a sizeable number are not motivated extrinsically. Their motivation comes from within.

Don't get me wrong, compensation is important and most top sales people are motivated by money, but not necessarily more of it. Fair compensation is often more important to high-performing sales people than anything else. One of the things at the top of the "things most hated list" of high-performing sales people is seeing "slackers" receiving rewards, at all, much less, rewards equal to theirs.

Some form of individual compensation that distinguishes high-performers from others is essential but top sales people are often team players and can see benefits from working with others in a team and like to see team rewards, as well.

So, if you want to begin to build a high-performing sales team, focus first on these three things: Sales Management Training, Quota Accomplishment, and Fair Compensation.

Build a World Class Sales Management Team. Spare no expense here, Know what makes a great Sales Manager and hire the people who have what is needed.

Set reasonable but challenging quotas and insist upon their accomplishment. Give them all the tools they need to excel but then, stand back ant cheer them on. Keep the ones that do and fire the ones that don't.

Reward your people fairly. Do not reward those who do not deserve it.

"Don't spend your time trying to put into someone what is not there. It is hard enough to get out what is already in." Marcus Buckingham, First Break All The Rules.

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Article Tags: compensation, improved sales, performance management, sales, sales performance



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