Most successful people can look back on their life and reference one or two folks who made a difference in their development and, as a result, made a difference in their quality of life. Some would point to a great teacher who challenged a way of thinking, others would speak of a coach who demanded top performance, increased skill, or more diligent effort, others still might reference a parent who guided them gently down the correct path, helping to carefully navigate through life’s little minefields.
Professionally, most of us have had a mentor who took on the role of coach or teacher helping craft a career path out of raw talent or unyielding will. Whether it be through title or action, we all have looked to someone as a leader worth following. I think that John Quincy Adams said it best, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more and become more, you are a leader.”
Every day we ask our sales managers to be more – to be Sales Leaders. We charge them with teaching, coaching and developing all while delivering results: they are truly the Difference Makers within the sales organization. As a result, it is extremely shortsighted to rate their value to the organization based solely on their performance versus quota. If you look at the roles we ask our sales leaders to play, it is clear that we need to think a bit more broadly when determining what ‘Good’ looks like.
How do you currently assess the performance of your managers? Is there a process beyond simply equating performance with quota attainment? If we are asking managers to do more than deliver results, shouldn’t that portion of the equation be evaluated as well? In fact, we should mirror a set of manager metrics with what we expect from managers – beyond performance to plan.
The top expectation for a manager is to develop the people on their team. But how do you gauge sales rep development? First of all, we need to look at performance within the team because developed employees can be expected to perform at higher levels. We can use Territories at Quota as a measurement here. Metrics become more meaningful if we examine trends rather than results at a given point in time. In other words, you need to know the direction you are heading not just where you currently are. The best trend to measure in this case is Productivity per Rep. Depending on the scale of your company, you can also gauge development by looking at promotions to higher-level positions (e.g. sales rep is promoted to sales manager or production specialist, etc.)
| …Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others…. |
| Jack Welch |
Of course development begins with recruiting – getting the right folks on the bus. Because having open territories is both a drain on revenue and company resources, we must also measure the effectiveness of a manager at keeping full staffing levels. Even if a manager may be fully staffed today, I would also want to review his/her listing of ‘ready candidates’. This ‘people pipeline’ is a solid indicator of whether the manager will be able to maintain staffing levels through periods of turnover.
Speaking of turnover, we need to examine the manager’s effectiveness at retaining quality employees. After all, we have invested time and money in training, so we would like them to stay around long enough to get a return on that investment. Do you measure turnover within your company? You should be looking at Turnover % at the sales team level. Frankly speaking, tenured employees are more productive. They know their territory and have the credibility generated from calling on accounts through multiple cycles. In short, they sell more.
Sales leaders have the opportunity to be Difference Makers in the lives of their teams. However, constant focus to revenue vs. quota may cause some to lose focus on the developmental responsibility for their team. In the words of Jack Welch, “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”
Leadership does not show up as a number on a report; but it is easy to see the results of good leadership. If people development is a sales leader’s top priority it is critical that we view their value through the correct lens – giving weight to the intangibles as well as the bottom line results.
