How To Conduct A Sales Force Assessment
Selling is a game of numbers, but assessing the success of your salesforce entails a lot more than just looking at the sales figures. Most people would consider revenue to be the all-important statistic; however, as the sales manager, you must explore the reason behind an end result in order to really boost your sales team’s success. Use these six tips to perform a sales force assessment and determine where you need to assist them in increasing their sales efficiency.
1. Determine Your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
Your key performance metrics are a vital element of sales enablement since they help you track your sales force’s performance during the sales process. You may use this data to determine the resources, preparation, or training that will assist them in making improvements. When choosing your revenue indicators, keep these two things in mind:
• Less More: It might be appealing to follow all the pieces of data from your sales department, but if you’re tracking too many things, the most useful data may be missed. Set a total of eight or less performance metrics to ensure that the meeting or sales overview is simple to understand.
• Prioritize Leading/Predictive Indicators over Reflective/Lagging indicators: Concentrate on ‘in-process’ measures like ‘booked appointments’ which you’ll use to train your staff while they work to achieve their sales objectives. Remove base measurements that are too narrowly focused, since they won’t stimulate growth in your sales team and just send you detail on end performance.
2. Set Clear Objectives And Expectations
The sales representatives must decide what they want. Set your goals early in the process and introduce new employees to the organizational culture. Use one-on-one sessions to communicate your priorities, objectives, sales areas, and the KPIs you’ll be monitoring with new team members. Deliver two-way communication with your company’s sales representatives to set your immediate and long-term targets. Help the staff to reach their personal objectives. Make sure you only set reasonable goals with measurable outcomes. This enables you to break down your sales targets into specific tasks and events, as well as track the implementation process.
3. Improve Your Feedback And Evaluation Process
It’s important that you have reviews that your sales team appreciates. Avoid needless anxiety by informing the sales reps that you don’t expect them to fully change their approach; instead, tell them that they’ll only need to make a few minor changes. Try to format the feedback as follows:
- ‘Continue:’ Maintain an optimistic tone by beginning with explanations of things they do well and can continue to do.
- ‘Cease Doing:’ Mention something they should avoid in order to produce positive outcomes.
- ‘Introduce This:’ Finish with everything you think they can introduce in their sales presentations.
It’s also a good thing to learn your employees’ behaviour, motivators, and communication preferences so you can adapt your strategy to what works best. A customized assessment can be game-changing.
Based on the feedback, you could also tailor your sales compensation to promote growth in particular areas based on the needs of the sales rep.
4. Don’t Just Track The Outcome, Track Leading Indicators Too!
Sales experts won’t increase their success because they’re being evaluated regularly and based on a single outcome. Take note of the promotional practices that are assisting the staff members in reaching their objectives. Leading metrics include the number of scheduled appointments, number of demonstrations presented, as well as leads that turned into opportunities. The leading or key metrics you’ve chosen should be specific to the team and the targets you want to accomplish. Set up processes to track and monitor the sales team’s success during the sales process, and intervene with input and preparation as needed.
5. Utilize Ride-Along Sales Calls
Joining the sales team in sales pitches is one of the best ways to gauge how well they’re performing. This means you physically accompany a member of the sales team as they fly to meet a prospective client or participate in a virtual, interactive meeting with a prospective client. Sales pitches allow you to watch a representative in action during an actual sales scenario. Ride-alongs are important for skills training because they give you, as the supervisor, the opportunity to see directly where training should be directed towards and to immediately provide your feedback so your staff can use it in real-time.
6. Find Out The Strengths And Weaknesses Of Your Sales Team
A good assessment tool reveals not only your salesforce’s behavior, motivation, and communication style, but also their knowledge (or lack thereof) of consumer-focused and business-to-business sales practices used among highest performing salespeople.
This can be done through an individual assessment of your representatives or an ‘aerial view’ of the team to see if they compare well to the key performance indicators you established.
Conclusion
A crucial point to note as you approach your sales team assessment is that they’re the backbone of your company, and breaking their spirits would harm both you and your company. Be tactful in your approach by understanding precisely what you want and then presenting it to the team in the most appealing and inspiring way possible. After all, you want to boost your sales force, tactics, and overall market.
