Hitting targets – Is this the responsibility of the salesperson or the Sales Manager?
We’d say it’s a bit of both. The salesperson is clearly responsible for hitting their own targets, but the Sales Manager is responsible for the collective, that is that the entire team hits their targets.
But hang on a minute! You’ll see in these pages that we think sales activity is more important than results, so why this focus on results?
Hitting your sales targets is important, but how you go about achieving this is even more important. Results are historical, backward looking and can’t be changed, but you can learn from them. Conversely sales activity is proactive and forward looking and should positively influence future results.
The first role of the Sales Manager is to ensure that his or her team are completing their activity effectively, based around QDQ:
Quantity – Are they doing enough activity?
Direction – Are they doing it with the right people?
Quality – With skill, knowledge & enthusiasm? On a needs-based selling basis?
These are non-compensating, for high performance you need high levels of all three. Learn more here.
To facilitate this, Managers should get each salesperson to complete activity plans based around QDQ. Their role should then include the following:
Regular 1:1s with the salesperson, at least monthly, where the salesperson discusses activities completed against their plan. They should also commit to activities for the following month. Sales Manager comments as appropriate. They should also complete a check-in with the salesperson every week to make sure they are on track.
Look for opportunities to reward each team member. Perhaps for winning a new deal or defending an existing customer. Perhaps introduce a ‘deal of the month?’
Shadowing your salespeople on sales meetings (or listening to phone calls) and give them effective and balanced feedback. This is the ‘game where it’s being played.’
Remember, the Sales Manager’s role is to motivate, inspire, teach and develop their team members to form the team into a winning one. It’s about getting out of your office to see what’s happening and giving feedback based on real observations.
In a nutshell it’s about making every one of your sales team better.
Consider this:
Clearly the desired place to be is ‘top right’, where they’re meeting or exceeding their results target and well as their activity target.
In the top left quadrant, they may feel comfortable that they’re meeting or exceeding their sales target, and they should feel good about that. The risk in this quadrant is that in not meeting their activity target they may well struggle to meet their results target in subsequent months.
The bottom right quadrant may be a concern as they’re not meeting their results target. However, providing they’re completing the right activity, this may be less of a concern as in meeting or exceeding their activity target they will hopefully return to the top right quadrant in the short term.
Bottom left is clearly an undesirable place to be. If they’re not hitting their results target it’s imperative that they put the hard work in on completing the right sales activity. If they don’t, how will they ever meet their results target? Seriously, if you’re a salesperson you don’t want to be here.
In Summary:
If your team completes the right activity, your results will take care of themselves. The role of the Sales Manager is to ensure this activity is completed. Yes you should monitor results and make adjustments where necessary but the main focus on achieving your results target must be on completing effective activity.