1B You are a sales manager in the electronics industry. Your firm had a salesper

Question

1B

You are a sales manager in the electronics industry. Your firm had a salesperson in the far western U.S. who everyone thought was a high performer. Every year he sent in his forecast, which was slightly higher than the year before, and every year he achieved that sales goal and received a nice evaluation and raise. Finally the salesperson retired and a replacement was reassigned. In the first year, he increased sales by 50 percent and in the second year he doubled the previous salesperson’s output. Based on this anecdote:

• List and describe five (5) pipeline analysis evaluation criteria that would have allowed you, the sales manager, to more accurately assess the salesperson’s performance.

• What would these evaluation criteria tell you about the previous and current sales reps?

Explanation / Answer

It is extremely difficult to get an objective snapshot of your opportunities from reps who were born to sell things (whether it be a big deal, or the idea that they’re “totally on track” for this month). Hence, why most sales managers spend their time in meetings trying to deflect “happy ears” in order to get down to the facts of each opportunity.

Subjective Sales Reps Lead to Inaccurate Pipelines: Listening to subjective sales reps self-evaluate their deals means that you’ll never be able to accurately analyze your sales pipeline or make reliable sales forecasts based on objective data. As you know, reps get extremely good at saying the things you need to hear to end the meeting, but the result is always bad analysis of the opportunities they are working.

The solution to subjective reporting and better pipeline management:

1. Identify and track each stage in your pipeline
2. Anchor each stage to a milestone and tie it to an exit criteria
3. Establish target totals for each stage
4. Establish target ratios for each stage

That way you can compare team pipelines to individual pipelines, maintain ratios from week to week, purge your pipeline more effectively (it doesn’t mean you have to kill your leads, just put them in the right stage based on milestones) and ultimately look for gaps in your pipeline.

Also consider measuring rep performance based on activity tracking. It puts your reps in control of the process, provides an objective measure of performance, promotes an activity-driven sales culture, and even helps reps build confidence and self-sufficiency (“If I make 100 calls this week, I’ll be able to get 5 demos”). Implementing these objective measures gives reps a yardstick to measure their own performance, and will also keep your data honest for more accurate sales forecasting.

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