Sales activity management is easy when your sales culture simply demands it.
I am often asked by sales people and Sales Managers alike what my view is on activity management.
The question is asked by Sales Managers in the context of it being a constant battle to ensure that their sales people are doing enough of the right activities to put them in a position to deliver the sales results required. The discussion is usually around the number of prospecting phone calls, the number of first and second appointments per week and so on…….you know the story.
From a salesperson’s perspective the discussion is more around the Sales Manager’s continual micro-management of their activity and the weekly one on one “justification” meeting around both their activity and their pipeline / forecast that this sales management approach typically requires. Most sales people loathe this sales management approach, as do I, from both a sales person and Sales Manager’s perspective.
So, am I saying we should be ignoring activity management simply because it can be a constant, nagging and frustrating experience for both parties? Well certainly not – I simply recommend a different approach:
- Start by collecting activity and outcome results for your sales team as soon as possible. You will quite quickly identify benchmark standards which predict success in your business and selling environment, by sales role. Without this data, specific to each role in your business, you will be guessing forever.
- If you are new to your role or the business you are working in, go with your educated guesses in the interim; and within 3-6 months you will realistically be able to collect the data you require.
- Expect to see significant variations in the statistics by salespeople in similar roles. This is caused by variations in prospecting planning, execution skill levels and plain old salesperson “number fudging”.
- Identify 3-4 leading activity indicators that correlate with success in each role and set the numeric. Here you have addressed about 35% of the story; you have established “on the field” metrics, which is a start, but “how they play” when on the field is equally or more important, as is the “quality of opportunities” they engage in. The latter two areas need to be monitored by in field coaching and opportunity reviews respectively.
- Back on the activity front; make the weekly reporting of these leading activity indicators mandatory and as simple as possible. Mandatory means you establish a culture of accountability for this reporting; this means no reporting – no job. Hard, simple, effective, no exceptions. Sales Managers often tell me that they are happy to make exceptions for top / high / consistent performers in this regard – guess what, they have no objection and are happy to report because they like to know their numbers and typically have nothing to hide. Once this is an element of an accountability culture that you have established, it just happens. There is no discussion and those who don’t deliver are frowned upon by their peers.
- Compare, analyse and identify the correlation between the various levels of key activity and sales results over time. Quarterly data typically reveals the trends, patterns and relationships between activity and results.
- Where activity KPIs are not met on a consistent basis and sales results are not being achieved by the individual, commence high visibility discussions to help the individual identify the contributing skill, motivation, process or personal effectiveness factors; and train and coach the individual up to standard.
- Do not try to fix motivation issues – it is just too hard. Ultimately it is not your responsibility to motivate people to front up on time and do what you pay them to do, with enough frequency and proficiency.
- Where training, coaching and other organisational support does not positively impact activity levels, manage the individual out. Unless they are an “eagle”, they will not hit their targets if they are not doing the activity.
- Successful “eagle” performers with low activity to results ratios can provide great development pathway models for the remainder of the sales force.
- When inducting new sales staff, ensure that they have a clear market and segment focus; and the support tools to generate the required activity from the outset. Manage activity under performers out within 60 – 90 days on this basis alone.
- Break these guidelines only in very well considered circumstances. There is an old saying in sales that “if you show me the (activity) numbers I’ll tell you the story” and across our client base over the past 4 years, pareto applies and 80% of under performers are not making their activity numbers.
You may be asking how this helps when coming back to your weekly face to face meetings with your sales staff. Well, it’s pretty simple – making the activity numbers are a pre-requisite for obtaining a weekly cadence meeting with the Sales Manager for value adding coaching and discussion. This meeting will not touch on activity volumes in any way because the culture drives their delivery and as said before, doing the activity is a pre-requisite for coaching and further support.
Ultimately, if you simply establish expectations and sales organisation accountability you will get to really manage, coach and lead – and not play baby sitter and excuse receiver. The time in weekly meetings is now freed up to analyse and discuss opportunities, review the quality of pipeline, work with individuals on skill and process improvement development opportunities, set competitive and differentiating sales strategies and so on. The secret is for you now to get started on this path.
