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Our objective is to help you Create the High Performance Sales Environment®. This blog is dedicated to helping Sales Executives, Sales Managers, Sellers, and Channel Managers resolve the field issues impacting them. So let's get to it!

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Managing Sellers Using Surgical Performance Metrics

Surgical Performance Metrics should measure a seller’s ability to execute every key selling skill (1).  And, based on gaps identified in the goal vs. actual performance associated with those metrics, sales executives and managers should put the appropriate surgical development plan in place to measurably improve seller performance against that skill.

Traditionally, sales management has used “Summary Metrics”.  They are metrics that, although important and do give a measure of performance, are higher-level and represent a summary of many skills.  As a result, management is unable to properly react to the result of the metric.  Quota achievement is such a Summary Metric.

Lets look at the average sales person.  They normally must execute ten “hard” skills to sell effectively and to achieve that summary metric, quota.  But we have found that it is very common for that average sales person to perform below standard in just one or two skills, which, in turn, results in them not achieving quota.  As a result, often times their employment is mistakenly terminated.  In this case, quota achievement was used as the key performance metric, but it is a Summary Performance Metric.  Although it may have revealed a performance problem, it does not reveal which underlying skill or skills that seller had a problem with.  The reality is that the terminated seller may have only needed help with one skill.

Surgical Performance Metrics help management determine which skill a seller needs help with so that appropriate actions can be taken.  To demonstrate, we have noted that a pervasive problem confronting sellers is that they call on buyers who are too low in the buying organization.  The skill they lack is a key qualification skill, being able to negotiate to gain access to power.  Note that having difficulty with this skill alone results in a very high percentage of sales people who fail to make quota.  The Surgical Performance Metric that managers should use is the A/B Ratio (for more on this key metric, see our video at http://www.youtube.com/user/AdventaceGlobal).   Importantly, managers should put a “Sales Call Qualification Skill Development Program” in place (for more on this topic, see our upcoming video on skill development) and then track performance improvement against the A/B Ratio.

We have assigned Surgical Performance Metrics to every skill.  This allows management to assess and grade the capability level of their sellers in each skill.  Then, for the skill a seller has the most difficulty with, management can ascribe the appropriate skill development plan. Management can then measure skill improvement using the appropriate Surgical Performance Metric.  As a result our client have seen dramatic, rapid, metric-based performance improvement (frequently in well under one quarter).  This is often accompanied by subsequent quota achievement and a turnaround in a seller’s career.  Further, that proactive sales manager also sees significant performance improvement in his or her overall team.


(1) Account Planning, Opportunity Identification, Prospecting, Account Penetration, Solution Development, Sales Call Qualification, Sell Cycle Control, Sell Cycle Qualification, Negotiating and Closing