Are you a great SaaS sales leader? 15 questions to ask yourself.

When your sales team is hitting quota and firing on all cylinders there is no pressing need to stop and ask if there are any problems (even though you should always be looking for opportunities for improvement).

It’s when sales targets are missed and growth is stagnant that it suddenly becomes a top priority to diagnose what’s wrong and get it fixed fast.

Unfortunately, in my experience, these are the exact moments that sales leaders and founders get perplexed. They know something is off, but they aren’t quite sure what it is.

Of course, there are “in-the-weeds”, but important, things to inspect. The number of leads, the quality of leads, the volume of activity, the sales cycle, the sales messaging.

But first, I find a higher-level perspective helps determine where the big gaps really are.

When I speak to leaders who are stuck scratching their head about how to improve sales, I start with 15 drop-dead simple questions. These will seem almost too simple, but they are remarkably effective at helping reveal what is working well and what isn’t.

Don’t let the number 15 fool you — the questions are really quick and easy to answer, so no hard work is involved at all. I promise that you won’t even need to put your thinking cap on.

Although the questions are easy to answer, they say a tremendous amount about the sales leadership style, team, culture, efficiency, and operational gaps. Here we go…

1. Do you use a repeatable recruiting process?

An ad-hoc recruiting process usually leads to bad-fit hires. See #2. Creating a predictable approach to sales hiring is pretty simple.

2. Are the majority of your sales hires good fits?

If you don’t have a repeatable process, I bet the answer is no. But if you do have a process that you follow and you still hiring a lot of good fits, it’s time to rethink how you are interviewing. A bad-fit sales hire is incredibly costly in terms of time, momentum and money, so this gap has to get fixed fast. Not every rep will work out, but the majority should.

3. Is your rep turnover acceptable to you?

It’s ok to lose sales reps who aren’t closing deals, but it’s NOT ok to lose your best performers. Look to fix your quota, compensation, and culture to retain A+ players.

4. Do you have a positive sales culture that’s focused on learning, collaboration, and results?

A sales culture can make or break a team and the results they are able to achieve together. Today more than ever, a positive, deliberate, accountable culture is a secret weapon to recruit and retain the best SaaS salespeople.

5. Do you use a sales playbook for rep onboarding, training, and development?

Much like ad-hoc hiring, ad-hoc onboarding, training, and development lead to unpredictable results. A well-designed sales playbook is the foundation for success.

6. Are your forecasts accurate?

It can really kill your credibility (with your team, your peers and your leaders) and shorten your tenure as a sales leader if you can’t accurately forecast. You need to develop a sales process and accountable culture that helps you predict what’s closing and when.

7. Does your sales team follow a defined sales process?

A sales process defines the steps in the sales cycle. Sometimes sales leaders don’t even know what their process is, let alone have it defined and documented. You need everyone selling the same way, and that starts with codifying your sales process. Then, maintain it with training and rep skill development. This leads to more predictable forecasts, easier problem diagnosis, and high fidelity reporting.

8. Does your sales team use a defined sales methodology?

If a sales process is the what, a sales methodology is the how. It’s critical that everyone use the same approach, so you need to be clear on how you want your reps to sell and what needs to happen at each stage of the process. You can use an existing methodology or develop your own. Many leaders use a hodgepodge of various methodologies to create something unique that works specifically for their organization and that’s fine too.

9. When you want to see data & analysis of your team’s activity and results, can you get that information easily?

A sales team runs on numbers and you can’t manage or lead a team without easy access to the metrics that matter the most. If you aren’t measuring it’s hard to improve anything.

10. Do you follow a predictable cadence for team and individual meetings that includes coaching, deal strategy, feedback, and open dialogue?

This one I am so passionate about — because sales leaders often neglect their people, which are their most important responsibility. A sales leader who has a sporadic, unpredictable approach to meetings isn’t a leader at all. Really.

11. What percent of your reps hit quota?

I hope it’s 80% or more. Not every rep will hit quota, and even your best reps will miss sometimes, but you should have most hitting quota consistently. If everyone is hitting quota all the time, it might be set to low and if no one is hitting quota it might be set to high. Or you may just have the wrong people in the wrong roles doing the wrong things.

12. What percent of your pipeline is sourced from marketing?

This shows how developed your outbound program is and can speak to the predictability of your revenue. The right percent depends on the company stage and market, but as a rule of thumb, I like at least a 50/50% ratio. An even better ratio is weighted more heavily on sales than marketing.

13. Does the sales team use one or more sales productivity tools?

It’s hard to compete, and get great results, using old-school tactics. Sales productivity tools are needed to meet, let alone exceed, standard sales performance benchmarks.

14. Does the sales team use one or more sales intelligence tools?

Sales intelligence tools and a process around how to use them directly correlates to team efficiency and productivity. It’s trite but true: a modern sales team runs on modern sales tools.

15. What is your sales efficiency?

It surprises me how many SaaS sales leaders don’t know their sales efficiency…their “magic number”. It’s an important high-level business metric to understand. If your company is somewhat mature, I hope your sales efficiency is 1 or higher. If you are a funded startup or early stage/high-growth it may be more in the range of .5–1, and that’s OK. Anything much higher than 1.5 shows you can invest more to fuel into your already efficient growth.

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Ok, that was 15 rapid-fire questions that I look at when I am evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a sales organization. For what it is worth, I think all of these things coming together for me and my sales team is how we achieve a magic number well above 1.

When teams are struggling usually a few of these things are way off and need to be corrected.

I recently launched a sales report card to help leaders understand the strengths and weaknesses of their sales organization by providing a score and recommendations based on responses to these 15 questions. Check it out, and take the assessment for yourself to see your personalized results (no registration required). I hope that you will, and I hope that’s it very helpful!