Definitions for sales performance management run the gamut.
So we asked Steve Richard, CRO at ExecVision and the founder of Vorsight. He explained that the effective model of management for sales leaders is training, coaching, inspection and celebration. Here’s a breakdown:
- Training: Teaching someone skills
- Sales Coaching: Helping them achieve mastery in that skill they’ve learned.
- Inspection: Monitoring the right activity metrics.
- Celebration: Ensuring that your salespeople feel valued, rewarded and recognized.
Steve recently joined LevelEleven CEO Bob Marsh to talk about what else it takes to build a high-performance sales team. Here’s what we learned:
10 Insights on Sales Performance Management:
1. “…salespeople are notoriously bad at going lone wolf, or going off the reservation and doing their own thing. We’ve seen across any big organization that that behavior leads to inconsistent revenue and results for everybody. So we’ve got to get them all marching to the beat of the drummer in the same way, and that’s where we can drive real meaningful results.”
2. “Five steps to a sales team of rockstars: DNA, environment, self-management, training to mastery and technology.”
3. “First [new sales managers] have to understand the buyer and understand the team as it currently stands.”
4. “Everybody gets activity metrics at this point. I think that’s an old story. What you’re seeing people do a better job of — though it’s still not good — is really understanding which metrics are making a difference.”
5. “Don’t let the metrics become the Wizard of Oz [hiding behind the curtain]. That’s a huge mistake that you see out there, when sales leaders turn into spreadsheet jockeys and they’re sitting there behind their screens and they have no understanding of what’s going on on the floor. Instead, let people be empowered by their metrics so that they can improve their own performance and help them understand on an individual level what matters to them.”
6. “Think of an NFL coach who doesn’t have game film. It’s comical to even think about it, but yet in most organizations if you ask a sales leader or a business owner if they have game film [for recordings of their sales calls], they say no.”
7. “The unfortunate reality is a lot of sales leaders go after technology as being the shiny object and the cure-all, when in reality if you don’t have the right DNA, the right environment, the right performance management system…and you don’t have any kind of training or coaching system in place, technology is not going to help you.”
8. “I believe that there’s a huge market … in advisory on the sales technology stack because people don’t know what the heck to do.”
9. “Sales leaders have to start with, ‘What’s the thing that we’re trying to accomplish in our business?’ And based on what we’re trying to accomplish in our business, then we can select the right technology. But unfortunately, a lot of people just see something at a show and think it’s good because they saw it at a show.”
10. “When it’s time to work in the business, work in the business and figure things out. When it’s time to work on the business, work on the business.”
Want to find out what else Steve and Bob said? Secure your copy of the recorded webinar here:
