What’s on Your Sales Performance Report Card?
I always got decent grades in school, except for math, which, to this day, remains my weakest subject. Additionally, there were always comments about me talking too much and being too social. I guess it’s no surprise that I went into training and coaching for a living!
As a kid, you don’t necessarily understand the purpose or benefit of those reports. But now, as a mom with kids in school, I see the value. How can I help them become the best versions of themselves without first having a baseline and regular updates on their growth, knowledge, strengths, and where attention needs to be paid and work needs to be done?
I see the same benefit for salespeople. If you want to improve your sales performance, you first have to know where you stand today. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in the industry for 3 months or 30 years, it helps to know what’s working and what’s not. Even if you’ve been successful, it’s likely that there are steps in your process that, if changed and improved upon, would make you that much more successful.
Most salespeople spend their days focused on activity. But if those activities aren’t producing the right outcomes, then something has to shift. Just like a student needs feedback on their test scores and study habits, salespeople need visibility into their habits, behaviors, and results. A sales report card gives you that clarity and helps prioritize where to focus your effort.
Tools to Improve Your Sales Performance
Having a Success Formula:
First and foremost, I recommend completing a Success Formula to better understand what you need to do consistently to be successful in your role. It’s one thing to know what your year-end or production goal is. But it’s another thing to know how to achieve it, how many calls, conversations, opportunities, and meetings you need to have each week to get to the desired outcome.
But you can’t stop at completing a Success Formula. You then must track your activity so you know how you’re matching up to the required activities. If you aren’t hitting the numbers, something must change. Tracking is going to be the best way for you to see where you’re effective and where work needs to be done.
Using a Prospect Scorecard:
There are so many moving pieces and variables involved in properly qualifying a prospect. Do they have a severe pain they need to change or fix? Do they have the resources, like time, money, and bandwidth, to make that problem go away? Are the key decision makers involved in the conversation? Are they ready to say goodbye to their current relationship?
The list goes on, and it’s a lot to keep track of. And it’s easy to tell ourselves that we may be in a better position with a prospect than we actually are. A prospect scorecard is a tool you can use to help keep you grounded and on track.
If you need to improve your Sales Performance Report Card, these two tools will help you do it. By taking out some of the guesswork, you’ll use your time more effectively and have more engaging, productive conversations with prospects, both enabling you to win more business.
And for what it’s worth, I can tell you most salespeople would get a note on their sales report card about talking too much during a prospect call or meeting. There is no tool or worksheet I can put in front of you to help change that behavior. All I can do is encourage you to listen with the intent to learn, not with the intent to respond. Just like your teachers wanted you to in class, stop talking and pay attention!
Author:
Alex Cole-Murphy, Sales Development Expert
Anthony Cole Training Group
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