{"id":12806,"date":"2021-06-01T18:30:05","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T18:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandler.dsstaging2.com\/case-study\/measuring-and-managing-sales-performance\/"},"modified":"2022-10-24T22:15:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T22:15:48","slug":"measuring-and-managing-sales-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandler.com\/blog\/measuring-and-managing-sales-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring and Managing Sales Performance: If You Could Only Track One Metric, Which Would It Be?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sales leaders: If you could only track one performance metric to evaluate the performance of a member of your sales team, which one would you choose?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lots of sales managers I talk to have already answered that question without giving the matter too much thought: their go-to metric is closed sales. That\u2019s the number they check in on most consistently. They usually do that by means of three questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>What\u2019s closed recently?<\/li><li>What\u2019s about to close?<\/li><li>When will that close?<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>That first question, of course, points us toward recent commitments to buy that have actual revenue attached to them. It\u2019s natural that we should be curious about that. And fortunately, whatever we hear from the salesperson can be confirmed without much difficulty. But is it really the best question to ask a salesperson? Couldn\u2019t we ask someone else in the organization about this and get just as much information?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those second two questions may seem like spinoffs of the first, but if you look at them closely you will realize that they are really quite different. They ask the salesperson to tell us <em>what\u2019s in the pipeline, <\/em>not what real-world revenue commitments have come in<em>. <\/em>Naturally, we\u2019re curious about that, too \u2013 but have you noticed that the answers we get to these questions often fall short in the predictive accuracy department?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first question on that popular list of queries, <em>What\u2019s closed recently?, <\/em>uncovers what is known as a <em>lagging indicator. <\/em>&nbsp;That means it tracks the outcomes of revenue-generating behavior that took place weeks, months, or perhaps even years ago. Not a great metric to watch. The second and third questions fall short, too, because they ask salespeople to give us their (inherently subjective and perhaps unreliable) \u201cbest guess\u201d as to when another lagging indicator will show up. There\u2019s nothing to count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>None of these questions track <em>behavior, <\/em>which is what we really want to know about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If I wanted to evaluate a salesperson\u2019s performance and I could only track one metric, I wouldn\u2019t ask about closed sales. I wouldn\u2019t count on the salesperson I was working with to give me an accurate assessment of when a given deal was going to close, either. It would be nice enough if they were able to do that, of course, but I wouldn\u2019t want to bet anything important on the accuracy of that guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So: What would I measure? I would pick a <em>leading<\/em> indicator. That\u2019s a verifiable number that connects to some countable recent behavior that has a direct impact on <em>future <\/em>revenue. Which metric would that be? Well, given that for most of the teams I work with, prospecting behavior is the driver of everything, I would ask that salesperson <em>how many initial face-to-face meetings with prospects had taken place over the past seven days.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, these meetings could take place in person, over the phone; via videoconference, or in person. What I am interested in counting is real-time voice-to-voice conversations with new contacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Note that I\u2019m not choosing to track second, third, or fourth discussions. Those numbers are interesting, but if I\u2019m limited to <em>one <\/em>metric that is going to tell me how a given salesperson is doing, I want to know about initial discussions with brand-new contacts. That number is going to tell me whether the person is connecting with enough suspects to maintain a healthy pipeline filled with qualified prospects. That number will tell me whether they are likely to drive real opportunities through the funnel. That\u2019s the key performance indicator, or KPI, that I recommend sales leaders keep a close eye on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Take a close look at the leading indicators \u2026 and the lagging indicators will take care of themselves!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandler.com\/blog\/building-the-right-team-to-drive-revenue-growth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Read this blog post<\/strong><\/a> to learn how to build the right team to drive revenue growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sales leaders: If you could only track one performance metric to evaluate the performance of a member of your sales team, which one would you choose?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":12807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1120],"tags":[1051,1033,1035,1034,1377],"class_list":["post-12806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-assessments","tag-leadership","tag-management","tag-performance","tag-sales-leaders"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Measuring and Managing Sales Performance: If You Could Only Track One Metric, Which Would It Be? 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