Measuring Rep Performance
How do you weigh the performance of a rep? How do you do it without any bias to get a true sense of where a rep stands? You want to avoid favoritism which is a common emotion in the sales pit. You want to be fair and let your sellers know what is expected of them.
I grew up watching baseball and beyond the enjoyment of playing I loved looking at the statistics aspect of the sport. You could measure players based on a set of standard KPIs so see how they were performing. I think my stance on how to measure rep performance was born from this. So what do you key on?
Revenue attainment
Pipe creation
Close rate
Avg selling price
Avg selling days
Activity levels
Discovery and Demo’s performed
Let’s breakdown the “baseball card” for REP #1 who is a premier seller:
Attainment here is over quota and when you look at the supporting statistics you can see why. The amount of opps created vs closed results in a 40% closing percentage. I’m assuming this is above my model for closing percentages (see here for reference).
Also, there is a great mix of the type of opportunities here between inbound, outbound as well as add ons within the install base. It tells me that this rep is using a great approach to target accounts and converting them over. The activity levels support this as well as I can see the rep is active in emailing, calling which is resulting in discovery calls and demonstrations.
I have a pretty good benchmark to compare the other reps with. Let’s use this to compare a B Player I have on the team.
The Back for the Card for Rep #2
So the attainment percentage is below the rep quota but still at 83%. Now I have modeled for rep attainment of 80% in my organization so this isn’t costing me quota. I want to build more cushion here and I can see some easy fixes.
When I look at the opportunities created vs closed I have a really high close rate of 50%. Avg selling days is a bit long but avg deal size is high so there isn’t a pipeline mgmt problem. What I do see is only 6 opps created vs the 15 that Rep 1 created. I think this might be the culprit but I’ll look at activities.
Sure enough the email volume is light and the call volume is VERY light. It’s resulting in not many discovery calls and fewer demos. So I can assume that the rep is great at targeting ICP but needs to crank up the volume. Easy to see here and coach to higher output resulting in greater attainment.
Now lets look at our struggling REP #3
This is a clear example of a struggling seller. Attainment is only 5% and when we look at the supporting metrics a clear picture is painted. Opp count is very high but there is only 1 opp closed leading to a closing rate of 5%.
Also the avg selling days are incredibly fast and the ASP is very low. I can assume that with 1 deal closed, at only 25 days, that this was an inbound deal that was going to close anyways. I’m going to look at the discount percentage on this deal as well because it’s only $25k. My fear here is that the rep was desperate and discounting unnecessarily.
Total activity is high, it’s actually almost identical to REP 1 output. BUT it is too heavy on email and not enough phone calls. In this scenario I have a seller just sending out mass emails and waiting for hand raises. There is no strategy here… just a numbers game.
In this scenario you want to get a PIP in place and start managing the rep to it. If they need guidance on what is expected then PIPs can help. If they aren’t capable then it will become obvious very quickly.
The overall performance really stands out when you compare them side-by-side:
This make it really easy to see who your A player, B player and C player is. It also makes it easy to determine where your performance is coming from. REP 3 cost me my number and I need to make an adjustment quickly (shame on me as well for not closing following this more closely).
Final Thoughts
Roster management is hard to do in leadership. A framework to measure reps makes it easier for you as well as the reps selling on your team. They can understand what is expected by them and where they are over/under performing.
