Putting salespeople in the right place

Holding a salesperson accountable for their KPIs can be tricky. 

We have plenty of reports and dashboards that show us standard metrics such as closed sales revenues, completed meetings, sent emails, emailed proposals and so on.

However, our understanding of the approach each salesperson has taken and what we are asking of them is often overlooked as we spend all of our time in the sales trenches trying to do more.

Recently, we have started looking at CRM and other sales datasets in a different way.  By visualising and analysing the data with a fresh approach, we can start to see the universe through the lens of one of our salespeople. 

Using a sales dataset, the diagram below shows not only the 32 active proposals our example salesperson Marty Fruedenberg is working on, but how each of these are connected within our wider organisation.  It helps is see the prospects and clients Marty is engaged with, the product set he is actively selling into these businesses, the regions and sectors he is active within, and who within our organisation he is working alongside to close these deals.

As sales leaders, it helps us start to ask better questions about what we are asking from our salespeople and where they need help.  If I am the Sales Manager in this example, I start to wonder whether Marty is our best salesperson when it comes to GTX Plus Pro, or is that our flagship product which is our easiest sale?  I start to question whether I should reshape our team away from a geographic sales focus, to possibly a product-based or sector-based sales approach.  When I look at Marty’s conversion rate, its 3 times below the average close across the business.  Why is this?  Is it lack of training, poor time management, an incompatible incentivisation plan or is he a better Account Manager than he is a BDM?

In my experience I have often formed views based on potential bias or a lack of understanding of what was really going on within my team.  This new type of visibility gives me the chance to get my fellow management team on the same page and be more confident about what we should be doing more of, and what we should be doing less of.