Let’s start with a quick test connected to measuring sales team performance. Take a moment to note down what your sales team needs in order to achieve great results. Just a couple of minutes…
Okay… We’re done?
You probably noted down things like a solid client portfolio, high-quality leads, a clear team structure, ambitious targets, and good management. You maybe also listed things like good tools, a mobile phone, and a company car. However, just as important as any of these is internal competition… and it is something that sales teams the world over are struggling with in the new world of all-remote work.
We’re going to look at what drives sales results and explain why the metrics dashboard of the Meetsales application isn’t just something we added as a nice feature that lets you summarize sales calls. For us, it was one of the key elements when building the solution because it is where sales reps gain insight which motivates them to sharpen their competitive claws.
Who are the stars of your sales team?
Salespeople need certain character traits in order to be successful over a long period of time. Here are just a few:
Thick-skinned
You’ll hear “no” a dozen times for every “yes”. In fact, you’ll often hear a lot worse than “no”. A good salesperson doesn’t take it personally.
Positive
You can’t let that feeling of rejection into the next sales call. Being upbeat in each communication, no matter what, is a skill that salespeople have more than most other professions.
Self-critical
Good salespeople don’t just remember the clients that say “yes”. You need to honestly appraise why people say “no” and try to make incremental changes to the way you work.
Competitive
You need to want it more than others in your team. Competing against your peers is your strongest source of motivation. Nowadays, we probably call it ‘gamification’ but measuring sales team performance has traditionally been about throwing chunks of meat to the lions and seeing which feeds best.
Competition has always been at the heart of sales
Salespeople need competition. This is not a new phenomenon. Imagine a marketplace a hundred years ago. There were fruit and veg stalls by the dozen. In order to earn enough to feed their own families, each trader needed to attract clients… and that meant working in direct competition with other stall owners (who might even have been their good friends).
The person with the best produce and the right prices was at an advantage. But it was just as important to smile wider and shout louder than other stallholders. All of these market traders were driven by competition that made them better.
Why are sales teams struggling for motivation right now?
Visible competition is so important in sales. The mass shift to remote work as a result of social distancing has been a huge issue for many sales teams as the individual members have lost one of their main sources of motivation and self-improvement.
Sales managers need to find clear and easy ways of constantly measuring sales team results and letting team members know what the departmental sales leaderboard looks like and how close the team and individuals are towards reaching their targets. In times of limited technology and innovation budget, most sales managers are reaching for SaaS tools that allow them to cap costs while bringing clear value.
Measuring sales team performance as a motivational tool
It may seem counterintuitive to people outside sales that knowing where you are in a ranking can be highly motivational. In fact, science proves that the most motivational place to be is just behind the leader. In the best-selling book ‘When’, Daniel H. Pink describes how trailing by a small margin—such as a sports team being one point down at half time—can stimulate a huge boost in performance.
So, while other areas of the business often react negatively to monitoring and performance-tracking tools—especially when the results are publicly displayed—sales teams generally find them to be an essential part of the path towards meeting and beating sales targets.
Using Meetsales for measuring sales team performance
When designing Meetsales, we spoke to sales representatives and team managers about what they needed from a conversational commerce solution for B2B sales. The general concept of putting the entire catalog into the sales call, by seamlessly connecting with any PIM, was the key. However, metrics were not just a nice-to-have feature; both managers and sales reps considered clear measurement and presentation of a range of KPIs to be fundamental for both evaluating the effectiveness of using Meetsales and for continually motivating team members to push themselves to achieve more.
If you want to speak to us about reenergizing your sales team, get in touch. Meetsales is a SaaS solution that lets you get up and running in a single day, so you can start gathering those motivational metrics right away.
Join the beta program for extra benefits
Meetsales is sales-call-ready. We’re currently looking for beta testers who will enjoy preferential pricing as we engage in lean development and add more and more features to elevate sales team performance.
Published October 29, 2020
