5 ways — improve performance & motivation in your sales team
Nowadays, Sales managers have a very difficult task to keep the motivation of their team and still bring good sales results. Especially, when you have physical distance with your team. Remote or regional sales representatives are hard to keep engaged and correctly measured for their results. If you look only in the sales figures you will not be able to understand why they are performing good or bad, and what are the reasons for that.
So, as a modern sales manager, you need to look deeper and set the right indicators to find the truth. Here are 5 ways or KPIs for sales teams!
1. Generating leads
This will show how good your sales reps are developing your market. New leads mean new opportunities but also means more awareness for your services and a larger community. But what to do when some of your sales reps are not growing their networks so well?
Use a marketing approach, use a scale to set a percentage-based indicator. If you identify the critical aspects of your environment like social, cultural, economic or political factors that influence their local reality you will be able to modify the KPIs and set a realistic goal for every representative.
And by doing that you will be able to have an effective ranking of your team performance. We all know that salespeople are mostly motivated by competition and results. Just keep the game fair for everyone.
2. Conversion rates
Again, to measure correctly you need to have a scale. Don’t let the numbers to fool you, don’t look at the exact number of sales but rather the % of conversions that your team is making. Yes, 50 is more than 20 but 50 out of 100 is worse than 20 out of 30.
A fisherman can only catch as many fish as he has in his lake!
3. Clients engagement
Another important measurement is how often and for what your existing clients are talking with your accounts or sales reps. At first look, it may be some issues or just customer support but if you dig deeper you will understand that these conversations show exactly how good your team is performing.
If they call too often it could be either because they have a lot of issues and your salesperson didn’t explain the products/services in the best way. Or it could also mean that your clients are engaged with your company because of the good account management. So don’t judge your team by the number of their contacts but rather the content of them.
4. NPS (Net promoter score)
This leads us to the KPI that can show what exactly is happening with your clients. NPS or Net Promoter Score is the indicator that will help you understand where on the market are you. There are 3 levels of results.
- Promoters (9–10): They are your fans, your supporters and most importantly they will recommend you to others.
- Passives (7–8): They appreciate your services but they are more likely to switch if you make a mistake.
- Detractors (0–6): Here you have different types of clients some will be generally unsatisfied with your services and will spread the word about it, but some will be just negative and passive about you because they had different expectations. In general, not testimonial material for sure.
Measure your NPS regularly as product verification and KPI for your sales team.
5. Employee Satisfaction
Salespeople are self-motivators they don’t need much to be engaged but they need to be appreciated and heard. As a manager, you need to maintain a high spirit with bonus systems, rewards and recognitions but also with a chance to speak their minds. Ask for feedback about the processes of their work and be sure that they feel safe to share their thoughts.
In every remote team, there are issues and challenges with performance and motivation but with clear, transparent and fair rules the game will be successful and enjoyable both for you and your sales representatives.
