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B2B Sales Best Practices

Sales Metrics: Summary of Dreamforce Presentation by Jason Jordan

  • To be a great sales manager:
    • Reverse engineering success: Focus on the right, manageable, coachable activities that lead to desired objectives, and, in turn, drive desired business results. [Do not say: “Close more business. Grow your pipeline. Increase your activity.”]
    • Use data to coach; coach by asking questions that help people figure out what best practices to apply
    • Assign territories
    • Assign quotas
    • Pay commissions
    • Hold sales contests
    • Define sales processes
    • Hold national sales meetings
  • Monitor/manage 3 layers of metrics: [“Our ability to report data has outpaced our ability to use data.” Hence, reduce the number of metrics to only those you can both manage and intend to improve upon.]
    • Business Results: Organizational outcomes that cannot be managed. (Revenue, market share, volume, customer satisfaction, quota achievement)
    • Sales objectives: Intermediate outcomes that require customer ‘consent’ and can be influenced. (territory coverage, customer retention, wallet share; new/existing product mix; new customer acquisition)
    • Sales activities: These are the only thing sales managers can truly manage. (coaching hours, call types – prospects vs. existing customers, call volume, training hours, account plan completion). These are the most important metrics to measure and are the most under-measured; in addition, they are the most important to compensate on yet are almost never used in compensation plans.
  • The most motivating thing for salespeople is clarity of task. (see: https://hbr.org/1983/11/make-the-sales-task-clear). When coaching, rather than telling people what to do, help them figure out what to do:
    • Manager: You are not going to get to your quota. What is the most likely path to get there?
    • Rep: Well, I could grow sales in my existing accounts.
    • Manager: How are we going to get there?
    • Rep: I could do some more work on my account plans.
    • Manager: Great, let’s work together on that.
  • Sales methodologies cited: SPIN, Miller Heiman, Challenger, Richardson, Holden, and TAS.

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