Managing Through Sales Activity Leads to Sales Coaching

This is a simple and short reminder on measuring sales activity. Have you heard the phrase, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure?”  It’s true.  If you want to manage a sales person/team you need data to base your coaching, support and decisions on. You’ll find some of that data in sales activity.

With the goal of building independent, empowered sales people I request data based on areas the sales person has not mastered and will help forecast future results. Finding the right data will help you coach toward higher results and be prepared to answer your boss, partner or bank when asked, “What will your future sales be?”

If you have never measured sales activity in your business start by tracking it to build benchmarks. I am in this situation with a client and particularly to help a sales person improve their sales. I am having the sales people track the following so we can get an idea of what the right amount of activity should be for the average sales person to be successful. This is not the list for every situation, it is the right one for this situation. For more High Payoff Activity visit the articles page in our web site for an article on the subject.

Calls for appointments
Leads given by company
Appointments scheduled
Appointments completed
Proposals presented
Deals closed

After two weeks of collecting the data I was able to provide charts to the sales person struggling. It was easy for them to see where they needed to improve without me saying a word. My role then went to a sales coach as they worked on increasing their activity.  As trends begin to show themselves you will then be able to use the data to know if a sales person is simply going through slow time (which happens based on external circumstances) or they have changed their approach and some small tweaks can put them back on track.