What Is Your Sales Team’s A. Q.?

It has been known for some time that if you want to measure an individual’s intelligence, you administer an Intelligence Quotient test. This has been an accepted method of measuring one’s intelligence for many years. In sales management, intelligence is important, but this does not get you closer to measuring or predicting your sales team’s effectiveness or the ability to predict with any certainty the projections of future sales. How do measure this? With an A. Q. test.

A. Q. is Activities Quotient. In sales management, you have probably already figured out two primary things. One, you can never know for sure who will be successful and who will not. Every applicant will let you know in the interview process that they are the best salesperson you have ever met. However, while some will be telling the truth, some might tend to exaggerate. Second, not everyone will do what is necessary to be successful. How do you determine which camp your struggling sales person is living in? Is it a question of a lack of training or a lack of activity? This is such a simple concept; however, in talking with sales managers over the years, it is unfortunately a concept they either don’t know about or are not using.

Every sales organization should have an understanding on what the basic numbers are to make a sale. Some organizations operate on a one out of ten rule. This means for every ten people or companies that a salesperson sees, he will sell to at least one. Therefore, the A. Q. is 1/10. In the insurance industry, the sales process I teach for the A. Q. is 1/3. The question then becomes, “How long does it take that salesperson to see the number of people or companies necessary to make you’re A. Q.?” Each salesperson will differ slightly; some better, some worse. But if that salesperson knows their personal numbers, they will have a road map to run on; a basic set of numbers that will help you predict what that salesperson will sell in any given month. Does your salesperson know their numbers and, more importantly, do you?

The challenge is that we need to measure what we expect. However, one of the most dangerous traps to fall into as a manager is to micro-manage your people. I do not believe that requiring a report to keep track of every detail every day will help you predict sales outcomes. Instead, this tends to run off qualified salespeople, who would prefer spending their time on selling rather than on reports. This process of measuring expectations can be achieved with simple numbers. Depending on your sales process and flow, your questions might look a little different; however, here is the basic idea:

• How many sales introductions were done?

• How many opening meetings were done?

• How many closing meetings were done?

• How many sales were made?

It’s all in the manager’s presentation. If the salesperson understands what numbers are needed to insure their success, they will be more apt to give them to you. How can you measure their success and do any planning without the data necessary to know if they are on track or not. This will help you manage the outcomes, set goals for the salesperson, and determine if there are training issues or activity issues that need to be addressed.