Evaluating Sales Performance

When your fractional sales manager begins evaluating sales performance, they will work from the ground up. In a sales department, that means assessing the clarity and alignment of sales processes and how they are being used, the salespeople against job fit, and how the sales environment or culture impacts sales performance. When these three areas are set right, sales coaching of a salesperson’s activity and selling skills will be more effective.

Think about a racing team. You can hire the best driver in the world, but if the race car is not in tune or the pit crew is out of sorts, it’s hard to coach the driver to success. While evaluating sales performance, we are looking for the small things that need attention and improving them. We can then focus more on the salespeople, who will become more successful. This all starts during the first and second months we are working with you during the Getting in Step phase, although it is a constant and ongoing improvement process. 

Evaluating Sales Performance (Getting in Step) and then improving (Tunning-up) what we see is needed will set the framework for effective Sales Performance Management. The evaluation process will set us up to establish clear expectations that the sales team understands, develop reports and dashboards that provide accountability, and monitor results consistently. From this position, our sales coaching focuses on activity, attitude, accountability, and conversations. 

Evaluating Sales Processes

Most of our clients have proven success, which means they have effective processes. Our role is to examine the following areas to determine what works and can be improved. 

Selling Process: What are the decision points (deal stages) a customer travels through, from asking to learn more to placing an order? What messaging are we using?

Job Descriptions: What are the primary role responsibilities, duties, goals, and ramp-up schedule for new people?

Administrative Process: What is required of sales to initiate orders or provide customer support, and is it clear and followed?

Compensation: How are people compensated, is it fair to the company and salesperson, and does it drive behavior?

Evaluating Each Salesperson

We have been involved in over 30 industries, and that is growing. While there are similarities in many, there are also many differences. Some roles require a strong hunter mentality, while others need more patience and service, and then some are blended. We use what we learn combined with our experience and the Wiley Sales Profile PXT Select to evaluate your sales teams and create a hiring template that improves the success rate when hiring new salespeople. We have all salespeople complete a Wiley assessment to help us build a hiring template, but the first use is to quickly understand their tendencies in the areas described below. 

The Wiley Sales Profile PXT Select assesses the following categories:

Thinking Style	Behavioral Traits	Career  Interests	Sales Skills
Verbal Skills	Pace	Mechanical	Prospecting
Verbal Reasoning	Assertiveness	Creative	Initiating Contact
Math Skills	Sociability	Enterprise	Building  Relationships
Math Reasoning	Conformity	People Service	Closing the Sale
	Outlook	Technical	Self-Starting
	Decisiveness	Financial Admin	Resourcefulness
	Accommodation		Coachability
	Independence		Working With a Team
	Judgement

Throughout the first couple of months, we’ll be able to evaluate how well they are selling against the goal, maintaining a pipeline, and whether they have the drive to be successful in sales at your company. 

Sometimes, it’s pretty obvious a person is not cut out for sales, but other times, we must provide them with the proper tools and expectations to decide if they can improve enough to succeed. If someone is on the bubble, an improvement plan is drawn and presented to the salesperson. The improvement plan defines where they are falling short, expectations, and a timeline for improvement to be realized.  

Evaluating the Sales Environment/Culture

The sales environment and culture are the established behaviors, attitudes, and communication related to sales at the company, both inside and outside the sales department. 

Sales Environment Assessment

This Sales Management Assessment will evaluate your sales environment against the five core elements we manage with at Sales Manager Now. The elements are Belief in your salespeople, clarifying and following through on Expectations, Accountability level within the team, engagement and consistency of sales team Meetings, and Conversations to demonstrate you care and are engaged with the salespeople. 

Sales Team Questionnaires

When your sales manager starts the Getting in Step phase, each salesperson will receive a questionnaire to help us understand how things are run from their perspective and learn about their strengths and weaknesses. This questionnaire and the Wiley Assessment provide a lot of context for your new manager to have a quality first conversation with each salesperson. They cover a lot of ground and develop rapport quickly. 

Internal Support Department Interviews

We understand that sales is a whole-company effort. It is the sales team’s core responsibility, and as your sales manager, it’s a responsibility we take seriously. We want to make sure the sales team is doing what is expected of them by other departments and that different departments know what the sales team needs. To begin this process, we schedule interviews with department managers and listen for issues we can solve and opportunities we can execute to meet support expectations to help sales increase orders. 

Sales Meetings

Weekly sales meetings are the hub of our work, where we are constantly evaluating sales performance. But to start with, we want to understand and assess how the sales meetings have been run. We like to sit in, watch, and listen to how they are conducted to understand what we’ll continue and what will be changed. When working with your team, we usually bring a new agenda and flow to sales meetings to support a high-performance team and an accountable sales environment. 

Build On What’s Working

We take a comprehensive approach to evaluating sales performance so we can build on your company and individual salesperson strengths and then improve your weak points. This Gallup article, Why Build a Strengths-Based Culture, provides findings and benefits for recognizing and leveraging strengths. We also don’t want to focus solely on sales conversations or motivation. As mentioned, sales is a whole company effort, and it’s our job to know what is needed to help improve sales. Our primary focus will be on the sales team, but if other areas need a change to help sales sell more, we must present a solution to those who can support the effort.