How will you evaluate the performance of sales Personal What are the criteria used for the sales force evaluation?

They are often successful, growing companies that need answers to the following questions: “Can we get to the next level within —?”, “Do we have the right team to get us there?” and “How long will it take?” We can help.

Engagements usually begin with a Sales Force Performance Evaluation, which provides an in-depth look at the organization’s salespeople, their systems, processes, and overall strategies and priorities. This sales force performance evaluation helps identify the most serious issues affecting sales team performance and provides a customized road map for planning an effective and meaningful sales training program.

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• Reveal the quality of your sales pipeline
• Reveal the effectiveness of your sales management efforts
• Discover any misalignment at sales level with current or planned strategy at corporate level
• Alert you to problems with your current hiring criteria

We can show you

1. If your salespeople are capable of executing your growth strategies,
2. How comfortable they are with your model for going to market, and
3. Explain why sales opportunities are lost or stalled.

We will identify those salespeople who can perform more effectively and what you must do in order to help them reach their full selling potential. We can also identify current non-performers who can be saved, predict how long it will take, and define the help needed to make them productive.

Does your company need to go from “Good to Great”? We can identify those people who will help you achieve that goal and those people who will not be additive.

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Can You Sell vs. Will You Sell

In the assessments we do of sales organizations, salespeople, and sales managers; we look for an individual’s willingness to be successful in selling. There is a big difference between “Can You Sell” vs. “Will You Sell”.

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We Manage the Entire Process for You

The evaluation begins with an online sales specific assessment link which is sent to your salespeople, sales managers and Sales VP (if one exists). The assessment, which is processed online, takes about 45 minutes to complete. Individual and team results are then presented to your Leaders and the results are used to build your company’s customized sales growth development roadmap.

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...Being a sales professional is often very stressful, as there are high demands to meet sales quotas. After all, if salespeople don’t make their numbers, it not only impacts their goals, but the financial needs of the companies. Because of this, there is tremendous pressure placed on hitting their sales.

But even though sales numbers are hugely important, they’re not the only way to evaluate the success of your sales team. If you’re trying to identify which salespeople on your team are the top performers and which ones might need to make a career change, it’s important to know how to look beyond the immediate numbers and develop a more nuanced way to evaluate sales reps’ performance.

Final sales numbers are often the most attention-getting stats for sales managers, but there are a lot of other elements that go into creating those final numbers.

Here are 5 ways you can evaluate sales reps more fairly and effectively and look at the whole picture of what they bring to your team:

1. Measure process, not just final results

It might sound counterintuitive in such a results-driven business, but more sales teams need to focus on the overall sales process, and not just the final results. You need to have a “sales funnel” in place that guides your prospective customers through each stage of the buyer’s decision-making along the entire customer journey, including these touchpoints:

• The first contact or initial inbound inquiry
• The earliest discussion to assess the customer’s needs
• More detailed relationship-building conversations and discussions about the potential ROI of the customer buying your solution
• The final sales closing

You should evaluate your reps not only on how well they close deals, but on how well they work through each stage of the sales process. You might discover that some of your best closers struggle with the early stages of making a sale, and that some of your salespeople with lower conversion rates in the final stages are great at qualifying sales leads initially.

Measuring the overall performance of your reps throughout the sales process will help you identify people’s individual strengths and help your sales team get better as a whole. Unfortunately, many sales teams currently do not have a consistent sales process in place–according to stats cited by HubSpot, 68% of B2B organizations have not identified their sales funnel.

2. Promote good prospectors

Most salespeople hate prospecting. They hate making cold calls, and they hate making those first uncertain steps on the road toward finally closing a sale. This reluctance means that there is an opportunity to find the salespeople who actually enjoy prospecting and who are good at it, and make prospecting a niche role within your sales team.

Perhaps you’ve got salespeople who struggle with closing sales or building longer-term relationships, but who have the right energy level and relentless ability to keep getting on the phone and introducing themselves to new prospects. Find a way to reward your salespeople who do the parts of the job that most salespeople don’t want to do.

3. Reward training

Many sales managers believe in the 80-20 rule—the idea that 80% of your sales results come from the top 20% of your sales reps. If this 80-20 rule is true for your organization, it can be tempting to just let your top sales reps keep doing their own thing and keep selling and selling—but this can be a mistake. Instead of evaluating your top sales reps based only on their sales numbers, try to capitalize further on their success by asking them to create best practices and training opportunities that can be shared with the rest of the team.

The best players in sports don’t just rack up great statistics for themselves; they find a way to make other people on the team get better. It’s the same for sales. Enlist the support of your best salespeople in training the rest of the team. Find out what they do so well, and replicate that success—and make sure your top sales people understand that training is part of their job performance evaluation.

4. Recognize teamwork

Is your sales team truly a “team” or just an assortment of individuals? Good sales teams should have a spirit of friendly competition, but everyone needs to understand that the real competition is outside the organization. They’re ultimately not competing against each other—they’re helping each other compete against your company’s competitors. Look for ways to reward sales reps that exhibit and promote good teamwork, whether that means filling in for someone on a client meeting, or helping a teammate close a big deal.

5. Think about the next deal

Another important part of the sale is how your customer feels about it afterward. Aggressive salespeople who will do anything to close the deal can be a huge asset to your team, but if they over promise or disappear after the sale, it can leave customers unsatisfied. Tracking and monitoring your progress by repeating customer satisfaction ratings six or 12 months after the sale can be another great way to tell whether your team is building successful long-term relationships—or just padding short term numbers.

Gregg Schwartz is the Vice President of Sales at Strategic Sales & Marketing, one of the industry-founding lead generation companies for B2B major account lead generation and appointment setting services. 

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