Most effective sales leaders talk to themselves. 9 out of 10 leaders admit to commonly asking themselves tough questions about their sales execution and spend endless hours in search of answers. (The other leader simply realized that they were too busy doing paperwork explaining their performance to listen to themselves talk any more.) Do you find yourself asking yourself these questions?
If you do, and you are always in search of ways to improve your performance, it may be worth investing 3 minutes in the Sales Execution Index assessment and see what the “dials” of your sales organization are telling you.
After reading through the brief introduction to the concepts within, click on the "Take The SEI Assessment" link at the bottom of the page to take the quick assessment and get your sales organization’s free SEI Score.
So how would you answer those questions if posed about your sales force or team’s ability to execute? Do you intuitively know that the results could be much higher, but just not sure what is inhibiting growth? Have you implemented the Dr. Seuss philosophy only to see that the increase in productivity and effort didn’t significantly move the needle on the sales of “Green Eggs & Ham?” So how do you know you have maxed out the capacity of your sales organization?
To use a racing analogy, if you wanted to improve your speed around the track, where would you focus? Would you focus on the driver’s capabilities, the car design, the pit crew, the engine, or the tires? In sales, leaders are often lacking the critical data to determine how to “increase their speed.” And unlike racing, you are often competing blind – totally unaware of how fast you are traveling in comparison to your competitors. It’s as if your team only races against itself, making it challenging to assess your true capacity to improve. Simply put, as sales leaders, you need to know what the capacity of your sales organization is and where to invest your resources to yield the greatest results. There is an answer and the good news is it’s not that complicated.
In ASLAN’s 18 years of analyzing the best and worst sales organizations, we’ve distilled it down to three simple dials that should be on every sales leader’s dashboard
And if all three are maxed out, the results your sales organization can yield is at full capacity – “the car just simply can’t go any faster around the track.” To gain greater market share, you have to look beyond execution and move to the value of the solution you offer, market conditions, positioning, etc., or simply hire more people.
The purpose here is to provide a simple framework to analyze where gaps in execution may exist. And the obvious place to start is to gain greater clarity on “the dials,” then you will have an opportunity to analyze your organization and determine your Sales Force Execution Index.
THE DIALS
So what are those dials? To assess how well your sales team is executing, all the root causes can be discovered in three main areas:
> Desire - How motivated are your reps to change/improve?
> Productivity – How compliant are your reps to the most efficient path to success? Or asked another way, are your reps meeting with the maximum number of, and most qualified, prospects?
> Competency - Regardless of opportunities or desire to improve, can your reps improve their level of performance? How would you assess their ability to “drive the car?”
Let’s take a deeper look into each category.
It all starts here. If motivation is low, your focus on the other two dials will yield abysmal results. Why would a rep work harder to improve or make more calls, if they have little to no interest in the fruits of their labor? Think about your last meeting with a team member. Did it begin with the solution to the problem (call more, sell better) or were you initially focused on discovering their desire to change?
Don’t we all want to get better? To change?
To get to the highest level of performance? Candidly, when change is required, most reps don’t “buy” what your sales leaders are selling. It’s a script acted out on a daily basis in thousands of meetings a day. Where the central theme is feigned compliance of the rep (“That’s a great idea. I really do need to ask those questions.”), making the leader feel better about the prospects of hitting THEIR quota (“Thanks Johnny. I really think we can hit our number this quarter if you sell our complete solution”). And right after the credits roll, the reps goes back to same old behavior that existed prior to the meeting. It is as if they, both the manager and the rep, live in two separate worlds. Without a change in desire, there is no change in behavior.
To get a better handle on whether this is an area that is effecting results, below are the components we will be assessing to discover your Desire Score:
> Ownership. Does the rep drive the need for coaching, ensuring they have ownership, or is the manager “pulling” the rep to the meeting? Are the development resources allocated according to the desire to change-investing only in those who exhibit the desire to improve?
> Alignment. Are reps clear on how meeting your corporate objective aligns with THEIR personal goals? Do they understand and embrace your corporate values? Do they align with their own?
> Role Clarity. Does everyone understand the objectives of their role and how they will be rewarded for meeting those objectives or the consequences for not hitting a minimum level of results?
> Barriers to Change. Are the leaders aware of, and effective at addressing, the emotional and logical barriers to change?
The next stop in our assessment is productivity. This is the one dial where most sales organizations excel- defining the prescribed steps that have been proven to produce the highest level of results. Because it is what is the easiest to measure and connect compliance to results, this is the only dial on most sales leader’s dashboard. To ensure you have a handle on any missing components that drive the highest level of productivity, we will focus the three following factors to determine your Productivity Score:
> Sales Process. Is there a sales process in place to ensure the greatest competitive advantage while allocating the appropriate level of resources for each unique prospect (i.e., Are you investing too much time on the wrong prospects)?
> Metrics. Is each team member aware of the critical metrics (e.g., number of first appointments, presentations) required to hit their targeted quota?
> Report. Is there a consistent report that reveals compliance to a productivity plan and how opportunities progress (or stall) through the pipeline?
Surprisingly, this is an area where we see the most confusion in regards to the most effective way to assess a rep’s ability to sell. And due to the lack of quantifiable data around the art of selling, competency is probably the most overlooked “dial” on the dashboard. But to ignore competency is paramount to a coach telling a baseball player that “we are not going to focus on how well you hit the ball, just number at bats and your desire to win. The hitting the ball part is just too messy and difficult to control.”
This attitude is somewhat justified due to how competencies have typically been defined. By adopting a different approach to measuring competencies, your sales organization can accurately assess the specific gaps in performance, ensuring that the coaching investment is rewarded with measured progress. Toward that end, let’s take a closer look at our recommendation for defining competencies before exploring each element of the Competency Score.
The single most important factor in measuring competency and ensuring you can quantifiably measure your sales rep’s ability to sell is to define each competency by CUSTOMER outcomes and NOT by looking at what the rep attempted to do (e.g., questions asked, communicated prescribed value proposition benefits, etc.) – what we call “behaviors.”
Let’s consider a golf analogy. A golfer’s success is based on a score (similar to a reps quota) but how do you measure the competencies the golfer must possess that ultimately determine that score? Some would say “look at their short game – that’s a key competency.” True, that’s like saying “prospecting” is a core sales competency – also true. But how do you measure that competency?
The first step to removing ambiguity and gaining a grasp on your sales organization’s ability to sell is how you choose to define competency. Let’s go back to the golf analogy. What if we broke down the “short game” into three competencies: chipping, sand shots, and putting? Now it is a bit easier to define and measure the competency of the golfer. You can easily measure putting by number of putts per round or sand shots by how close the ball consistently lands near the hole. It really DOESN’T matter how they hold the putter or their stance – this is a critical distinction. If the player consistently has a low number of putts, their competency is high. As a coach, you don’t have to get bogged down with all the elements that go into putting if the outcome is achieved (i.e. the ball consistently goes in the cup with an acceptable number of putts) – move on. Even if their total score is off, it is not due to a putting problem. On the other hand, if the putting number is high, competency is low. Now it makes sense to take a look at the elements of putting that may be causing the problem – defined as “behaviors” (i.e., stance, grip, alignment). This is the level at which development occurs. You zero in on the behaviors that affect the competency (or outcome). A sales example might be helpful.
Let’s say you want to measure a rep’s ability to build value in a solution. Most would focus on the rep’s ability to communicate benefits, identify barriers or handle objections – all behaviors. These are important elements in building value but not the desired outcome. Here’s a way to measure “building value” as an outcome: the customer embraced the recommendation and/or positively changed their opinion of the product/service/company and was willing to advance. Given the opportunity, if the rep consistently achieves this outcome, they are competent at building value. The “how” really doesn’t matter. This is only important if they failed to achieve the desired outcome, and the manager needs to zero in on why the “ball landed in the woods.”
Hopefully with a clear understanding of how to measure competency, let’s dive into to all the elements required to assess your sales organization’s ability to keep this dial turned up, the Competency Score:
> Defined. Are all of the eight core competencies (1:1 and strategic competencies) defined as an outcome that can be clearly measured (e.g., Build Value – customer embraced recommendation; Advance – customer committed to the next best event)?
> Diagnose. For each competency, are gaps in the relevant behaviors accurately identified (e.g., asked closed-ended questions, focused on features, etc.)?
> Prescribe. Are there developmental activities organized for each behavior?
> Track. Is there a measurement system in place to consistently track each rep’s level of competency?
SALES EXECUTION INDEX
Now it’s time to take a look at your organization and your “Sales Execution Index”. Click on the “Take the SEI Assessment” link below and take just a few minutes and honestly answer a few questions to get your SEI and a few tips and ideas that may help you with your sales execution journey.
To gain greater clarity on each dial (Desire, Productivity and/or Competency) and/or focus on root cause analysis, the assessment that follows is a good place to begin. It is designed to quickly expose the core areas that are potentially inhibiting your organization’s sales results and provide a starting point to bridge the gap in sales force execution.
