Measuring Sales Rep Productivity in 2024
The pursuit of success often leads us down the path of inputs for amplified outputs. However, it's becoming increasingly apparent that mere amplification doesn't necessarily guarantee greater productivity.
Early in 2023, Ebsta partnered with Pavilion to look at the state of Sales. It’s the same general story every year, most Reps do not hit quota.
When we look at statistics like this, it’s evident that a deeper understanding of productivity is required.
This blog will look at sales productivity.
Before we dive in, let’s look at what we mean by sales productivity.
If you’re curious to know more about your revenue funnel, click below to start your assessment. You’ll get a result and a detailed report on what you can do next, in less than 5 minutes.
Understanding Sales Efficiency vs. Effectiveness:
Efficiency and effectiveness serve as the twin pillars of sales success.
While efficiency answers the question, ‘are my go to market teams doing their core activities and tasks the right way?,’ effectiveness figures out, ‘are my go to market teams producing the right results?’ Efficiency involves doing things right, effectiveness is about doing the right things.
Striking a balance between these two is crucial, as prioritising one without the other could lead to missed opportunities or diminished productivity. We aim to navigate this intricate relationship for more refined sales outcomes.
Neglecting to address the nuances between sales efficiency and effectiveness can lead to several pitfalls within an organisation's sales strategy. Here are 5 consequences of getting this wrong:
Wasted Resources:
Without a clear understanding of efficiency and effectiveness, resources might be misallocated. This can result in wasted time, money, and effort on activities that do not contribute significantly to desired outcomes.
Missed Opportunities:
Focusing solely on efficiency might lead to overlooking critical strategic initiatives or potential opportunities that could drive long-term success.
Similarly, overemphasising effectiveness without improving processes can lead to inefficiencies in execution.
Reduced Adaptability:
Ignoring the balance between efficiency and effectiveness can hinder a company's adaptability to changing markets.
Seeing an increase in call activity to a particular persona may look good on the surface, but realising a downward trend in positive connect rates can highlight a change in market dynamics.
Failure to adapt swiftly and strategically might result in missed trends or shifts that could impact sales success.
Diminished Competitive Edge:
Competitors who effectively balance efficiency with effectiveness may outperform in terms of market responsiveness, customer engagement, and overall sales success.
Low Team Morale:
Employees might face confusion or conflicting priorities when the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness is not clear. This can impact morale and hinder their ability to perform at peak performance.
How Reps are spending their time
Sales leaders will often look at their dashboards at the end of the day and think, “what the heck have my team been doing today?” These are some of the inputs and outputs you’ll typically see tracked:
Inputs
Accounts being approached
Prospect’s (people) being approached
Number of calls being made
Emails sent
LinkedIn messages
LinkedIn invites
Demo’s requested
Website visits
Outputs
Meetings booked
Meetings held
Newly qualified opportunities (MQLs, SQLs)
Demo’s booked and completed
Discovery calls completed
Proposals/ SOWs out
Closed (lost and won)
A good day for a sales leader is when all of the key performance indicators (KPIs) have been met. These are important because they act as a leading indicator that organisations can control.
According to Salesforce’s State of Sales Report, reps spend only 28% of their week selling. This is on a downward trend since 2018.
Before we gasp, we have to understand what “selling” means for our companies. Is sending the required amount of emails everyday considered time spent selling?
Or do we measure selling on completing the email activity at the standard that is expected - relevant or personalised, with deep research? Is research a part of that selling activity or are we only measuring asynchronous and synchronous communication with prospects at target accounts?
It’s understandable that leaders may be up in arms regarding Rep daily activity when they do not see the necessary actions that drive the necessary outcomes.
However, we can’t know if this is good or bad without looking at the output. In the same report, it was found that 72% don’t expect to meet their annual quota.
We can make some assumptions then that more time “selling” could lead to better quota attainment. Acknowledging the things that are in our control, here are 4 reasons why believe not enough time is spent selling and why this can subsequently contribute to low quota attainment:
More tools
“Sales toggling” is driving up switching costs. The same Salesforce report found that reps are using up to 10 tools to close a deal.
It’s diluting focus and adding more friction into their working day. Gone are the days when you are given an excel spreadsheet, a phone and a prayer and expected to find and close opportunities. Our sophistication has also created a new set of work anxieties as Reps battle to learn the prospect, learn the process and learn the tools all while being threatened with a performance improvement plan (PIP).
Ego-metrics
There has been a pattern of focusing on the wrong inputs that simply create vanity metrics and make us feel good. The input metrics rarely consider the experience that is being created for the customer.
Reps will report to their leader’s that a particular type of messaging isn’t working, but be encouraged to continue to send out an email sequence/cadence so that marketing is happy their message is going out, and the leaders can say reps are working hard.
Overwhelm
A lack of direction or strategy with high expectations of delivery are constantly put on the shoulders of reps.
There is a sense of feeling overwhelmed by the high expectations, the multiple tools, the manual work, and the complex interactions. Couple this with feeling discouraged by the low quota attainment, the economic uncertainty, and a general lack of support and recognition.
Sales Acumen and Ability
Some Reps simply don’t know how to perform in their role. Sometimes this is a skill problem and other times it’s a will problem. Occasionally we make the wrong hire, people aren’t coachable, there’s a lack of initiative or self awareness.
Sometimes, the Reps simply do not learn at the pace that is required for them to be successful in their role. This can create selling reluctance, where Reps avoid taking the necessary actions everyday that can increase their chances of success while also reducing a leader’s belief in a Reps ability to be successful.
These feel “soft” but they are very real. So where do we go from here?
We need to develop a repeatable and scalable way to measure Rep productivity. The old way of simply chasing vanity high volume metrics, is most certainly over. It can have you chasing down companies and people who have no intention of buying anything from your team. The worst part is you only find out when it’s too late!
How to effectively measure Rep Productivity
One of the things we get wrong repeatedly, is go-to-market (GTM) alignment.
We need to first understand the metrics that drive our business, recognise the role every GTM team plays in those metrics and then take a best guess approach to break down what needs to happen to meet those metrics - consistently.
It’s best guess because we base most of our decisions on historical data and inferred future insights….based on - you guessed it - historical data.
Yes, success leaves clues, but not everyone has a clue, right?!
This means that we have to have extreme rigour around what we need, what we are tracking and how often we are reviewing things. If you want to improve Rep productivity, start to think about tackling the areas below. Before you jump straight into these, the structure should look like this.
Rep productivity is not a finite state. It’s continuously changing based on the metrics that drive your business at any given time and what is required to help meet those. In the most simplest form, every week we are trying to uncover;
What did the 40 hour work week convert into value for our organisation and in turn our customers?
This is a good place to start.
The metrics that matter - make sure that these are aligned across the entire GTM team. Socialise these numbers with absolutely everyone so there is no misunderstanding
Set crystal clear expectations - it’s easy to assume that a target will drive the right behaviours. When I asked 100+ Sales Leaders if they believe their teams have full clarity on what is expected of them, no one could say yes with more than 85% confidence. It’s not just clarity on the inputs and outputs, it’s clarity on the quality too. 10 discovery calls are great but 5 high quality discovery calls could produce 2 x the results.
Follow the trends - set up weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings to track trends. You want to see how inputs are correlating with key outputs. For example, if a decline in a particular outbound channel is showing a positive trend in outcomes like new opportunities created. On the surface it may seem like a Rep was not being productive because the leading indicator shows a drop in inputs. However, if it’s driving higher quality and thus, outcomes then maybe this is something to double down on.
Make GTM training the norm - every one who engages face to face with a prospects and customers should receive weekly training. Training gives reps more “at bat” opportunities to strengthen their go to market muscles. Training impacts the quality of the input and that in turn drives the outputs that make our organisations successful.
Push inputs but reward outcomes - a great sales leader once said “don’t be a busy fool.” Create an environment that helps Reps understand that they have more control than they think. The outcomes can only be delivered if the high quality inputs are there. Help them understand the positive role they play in helping customers to address issues, challenges and opportunities in their business.
What’s next?
Start work on the above. Today.
If you are a Rep, go review your own data and figure out if you’re recognising any patterns. Don’t do a gut check. Check the actual data so you’re not being biased in your judgement.
For Sales, Marketing and Customer Success Leaders, it is a good idea to get together regularly to ensure you are all on the same page about the key business metrics. You can not improve what you are not measuring. You can also not understand rep productivity without knowing what good productivity looks like.
Olga Denisova said it best, “you have to create your own best practices.” When you are speaking with your peers to understand how to set things up, it’s easy for them to say “my team make 100 calls a day.” That may be the input that drives the best productivity for their business based on the metrics that drive their business. However, you have to take this with a pinch of salt to ensure that you aren’t creating productivity measures that are out of sync with your business objectives.
Considering how you get started? We thought that may be the case and we created a guide to help you. Click here to access it
Make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and share your thoughts.
A Buyer's World, is our insightful podcast hosted by CEO & Founder of Revenue Funnel Hannah Ajikawo.
On the show Hannah is joined by revenue leaders from across the globe to give you actionable steps that create logical and appealing pathways to purchase.
