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In the realm of sales, one thing is abundantly clear – not all sales roles are the same. Before we dive into how to actually identify and utilize your top sales performer, let’s first define the 3 key roles behind the umbrella term “sales”:
- Sales Development Representative (SDR): Entrusted with cold calling, lead qualification, appointment scheduling, etc.
- Account Executive (AE): Responsible for closing deals. They collaborate closely with SDAs to convert sales qualified leads into paying customers.
- Account Managers (AMs): Work to maintain and nurture existing customer accounts, as well as upselling those accounts.
As you can see, each role has distinct objectives, which means distinct ways of identifying how they perform, and how you, as a manager, will capitalize on their performance.
How to identify your top sales performer(s)?
One of the most appealing aspects of the sales profession is its inherent objectivity.
Salespeople are held accountable for meeting specific performance targets, making it relatively easy to identify high performers based on their achievements against these objectives.
However, it’s crucial to recognize that SDRs, AEs, and AMs have different sets of objectives.
Example 🔍
For instance, SDRs are typically evaluated based on the number of leads they have qualified, rather than their ability to close deals.
However, you don’t want your SDR sending lots and lots of opportunities and wasting the AE’s time.
Key Metrics for Different Sales Roles
To identify top performers within each sales role, you must focus on role-specific metrics.
Let’s break down some essential metrics for each role:
1. SDRs:
- Lead Rate: The number of leads sent to the AE per month.
- Rate Qualified Leads: The percentage of leads sent to AEs that meet strict qualification criteria.
- Efficiency in Lead Qualification: The ratio of qualified leads to the number of calls made.
Quick Tip 💡
Some SDRs achieve their goal of generating 50 qualified opportunities with just 80 calls, others require 200 calls to reach the same goal.
So you see there’s room for improvement here, for instance in building and maintaining their prospect databases effectively.
Another ratio you could look is the number of opportunities sent to the AE versus the rate of opportunities actually accepted.
Use these ratios as indicators to identify top-performing SDRs.
For SDRs, excelling means not only meeting their lead generation goals but also sending highly qualified leads that don’t waste the AEs’ time.
2. Account Executives:
- Closing Rate: The percentage of deals closed compared to deals worked on.
Expert Tip 🧠
This also, in part, falls on the SDR’s aforementioned ability and efficiency and that’s why the two are quite interdependent.
That said, it’s also should be a part of the AE’s job to coach the SDR and ensure their progress.
- SDR Coaching: Why did they accept this deal sent by the SDR? Why reject the other one? An AE should be able to demonstrate their process to their subordinate.
It’s more challenging to identify strong Account Executives (AEs).
However, a true top performer AE is not someone only skilled in closing deals, they also should be adept at discerning which deals are worth pursuing.
In essence, the best closer should excel in both aspects:
- They should not only focus on their own closing abilities but also work towards helping fellow AEs improve their closing skills.
- Additionally, they should share their insights with SDRs, teaching them how to effectively validate deals and providing coaching in this area.
3. Account Managers:
- Upsell Rate: The percentage increase in the value of a client’s portfolio over their lifecycle within the company.
- Coaching Role: Identify and coach the top AEs to enhance their skills, just like AEs with SDRs.
AMs play a critical role in expanding client accounts and/or ensuring long-term satisfaction.
Expert Tip 🧠
The challenge with upselling lies in how you qualify it.
Imagine an AM with a portfolio of clients collectively worth 1000€ in January this year.
Depending on the sales cycle, say next January, what are they worth? Still 1000€? Increased to 1500€, 3000€, or even 5000€?
This is the measure of the effectiveness of an Account Manager; it’s in growing their portfolio.
Now, let’s get into more detail, two factors come into play when you talk about increasing portfolio value:
- AM’s ability to increase the average purchase size of their clients through upselling.
- Their capacity to retain their top paying clients.
Some AMs may focus on maximizing their top clients, even if it means losing others. And perhaps, this will result in excellent portfolio performance, but poor client retention.
So it depends on the type of individual you have working on this portfolio, and therefore, their coaching will focus on one of these aspects.
Challenges Faced by Sales Managers
Sales managers face several challenges when implementing coaching programs and leveraging the strengths of top performers. These challenges include:
- Evolving in a Non-Operational Role: As we said earlier, transitioning from a sales role to a coaching role can be challenging for top performers. The challenge, even though they made the transition, is to make sure they’re able to coach their salespeople well and provide them with good support when they’re no longer on the pitch.
- Identifying Potential Coaches: Not all top performers are natural coaches. Sales managers must assess who possesses the necessary coaching skills and willingness to mentor others.
- Incentivizing Coaching: Coaches often dedicate time to mentoring their peers, time that could be spent generating revenue. Sales managers must ensure that coaches are adequately compensated for their coaching efforts to maintain motivation.
Quick Tip 💡
How do you compensate your SDRs, your AEs, your AMs and ensure they collaborate effectively?
You pay them!
And you pay them more than what they’re “losing” during that day of coaching.
For instance, if your AM, in one day, can generate a 200 euro bonus, and you take away that day from them, you give them 300!
You give them more than they would make themselves because you have to motivate them to do it and make it worth their time.
How to utilize your top sales performer(s)?
Once you’ve identified your top performers, the next step is to leverage their expertise to elevate the entire sales team.
Coaching is the linchpin of this strategy!
Effective coaching not only improves individual performance but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement within the sales organization.
The challenges for a sales manager primarily revolve around the transition from being in the field to a manager role.
Expert Tip 🧠
While the sales manager may have prior sales experience, their new managerial position demands a different skill set. This is why they need to:
- Hold regular One-on-One Sessions: Sales managers need to hold regular meetings with the top sales performers to understand what they are doing well and make this part of the new sales process.
- Document and update: It’s also up to them to document the insights from these meetings so that they can be included in everyone else’s training. For instance, the new sales onboarding.
- Goal Setting and Development Plans: Collaboratively set achievable, yet challenging goals with your salespeople. These goals should align with both the team’s and the company’s objectives.
- Performance Metrics: Track the progress of each individual against their goals and KPIs. Use data-driven insights to pinpoint areas where they excel and areas that require improvement.
Final Thoughts
In reality, the world of sales is an objective one. It may seem individualistic with a big focus on numbers.
However, in the end, as you understood throughout this article, it’s not as individualistic as we make it out to be. There’s an organization, at least there needs to be one because the SDR has to send leads to the AE, the AE has to coach the SDR, the AM has to coach the AE, and so on.
There has to be the least bit of harmony between the different components for the department to work. And that’s what the role of the sales manager consists of; to make sure that everyone isn’t thinking only of themselves.
The stereotype is that salespeople are “me me me, my results” but in reality, a good sales manager or head of sales understands the overall structure, how everyone works, how individuals organize themselves, and the team implications, and makes sure that everything runs smoothly.
Related Post 📝
How do they make sure that there’s good communication, that deals go through smoothly, that information about an important deal is shared properly -in both directions- and that the team wants to work together too?
It may seem silly, but that’s going to happen through motivating your salespeople, regular follow-ups, department or even company-wide hangouts, and things like that.
That, and so much more, is what we go through in our latest post about sales motivation!
That’s the role of a manager, who has to fight against the very individual aspect of the sales job, which can easily become all about the one person instead of the team.
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