6 Key Tips to Evaluate Sales Rep Performance

March 12, 2021

From sales cycle length to average deal size, there is no shortage of sales metrics and KPIs you can use to evaluate your sales team’s performance.

But while sales is indeed a numbers game, you won’t do justice to your sales reps’ efforts and performance by only looking at a select few metrics (such as conversion rate). How to evaluate sales performance entails a myriad of factors beyond traditional sales metrics.

There’s a lot more to successful sales than quantitative performance alone. To get a better sense of how your sales reps are performing and consequently help them improve, there are some intangible aspects that you must keep in mind as sales managers.

Here are six essential tips to qualitatively evaluate your sales reps’ performance and uncover areas where you can help your reps improve their sales strategy.

Tip #1: Measure the Process, Don’t Fixate on the Final Numbers

t is entirely possible that some of your sales professionals are closing a streak of good deals even if their approach isn’t the most optimal one. This kind of success can only last so long.

That’s why it’s important for you as a manager to monitor each rep’s performance and processes, not just the final numbers.

Use a sales funnel that essentially guides your prospects through each stage of the buyer’s journey, from awareness and interest to the consideration and decision stage.

Evaluate sales reps’ performance in each stage of the sales funnel, including sales performance metrics like:

The first contact or inbound inquiry
Email follow-ups
Discussions about the potential value derived from your product or service
The final closing

In other words, as a sales manager, assess your sales teams not only on how well they close deals but also by measuring sales performance in each stage of the process.

You may discover that some of your top performers struggle with the initial stages of warming up the prospect, and reps with lower conversion rates are great at qualifying leads initially.

This way, you identify each rep’s individual strengths and help improve your team’s sales performance as a whole.

Although the win rate and success of salespeople isn’t entirely a numbers game, the average deal size each sales rep is able to close remains one of the leading indicators of sales performance.

For example, if a sales rep is closing the same or greater quantity of deals while their conversion rate rises, their sales performance is meliorating.

Conversely, if a rep’s sales results are significantly lower than that of the other salespeople, they may need additional training and skill development.

Tip #2: Recognize and Promote Your Prospectors

This one deserves special attention. As their sales manager or sales leader, you could provide your sales reps’ spreadsheets chock full of contacts and potential customers, but they may still make their best sales from self-prospecting.

So while prospecting is often considered a lost art today, sales reps should still embrace the conventional way of prospecting and self-generating leads to reach sales goals.

That being said, most modern sales reps don’t care much about prospecting. They don’t enjoy making cold calls or taking those initial indefinite steps that eventually may lead to closing the deal.

This indisposition means there is an opportunity to find a few good reps who truly love prospecting and are adept at it. They make prospecting an expert role within your sales organization.

So you may have reps within your sales team who struggle with closing deals or building lasting relationships, but what they have is an unrelenting drive to keep trying to find new prospects on their own and hopping on a call with them. These are your unsung heroes who are happily willing to do parts of the job that most others don’t want to do to increase sales performance.

So, be sure to show some extra appreciation and recognition for sales reps motivated enough to do self-prospecting. Conduct a brainstorming session on a monthly or quarterly basis so you can work with them to collectively brainstorm areas they can be prospecting.

Promote prospecting by pointing out different niches or customer segments your reps could target. After all, the more passionate they are about generating more leads, the more successful they’ll be in closing more deals.

Moreover, your sales compensation plan should be structured in a way that promotes sales productivity. If your pay structure benefits your sales force when they display exceptional sales performance and reach sales goals, you will undoubtedly notice an increase in sales numbers and overall revenue.

Tip #3: Evaluate Their Knowledge

Efforts and results don’t necessarily translate into knowledge or skill. And make no mistake, your sales team’s level of knowledge around the following areas can be a key factor in your overall success of sales performance:

Product

Do your sales reps thoroughly understand your product? Can your entire team answer any and every question about your company’s offerings? Before new product features are rolled out, do they take the time to learn about them?

Company Processes and Policies

Are your reps able to help take in new employees by answering the questions they might have about the company, its policies, and its offerings? Do they understand each and every aspect of your company’s sales process in a way they can explain it to the new team members?

Competitors

At the heart of successful sales performance is the ability to clearly convey your value propositions against those of your competitors. And so, are your reps fully cognizant of your competitors, their products, and their stature in the eyes of the customers?

Customers

Last but not least, your sales team must know everything about your past and existing customers so that they can fluently convey relevant experiences with historical data to potential customers. The best reps can highlight exactly the right metrics about particular customers that can help seal the deal.

And so, make sure your sales reps have a solid knowledge of these four critical areas of your company.

Tip #4: Have a Joint Sales Call With Your Sales Team

What better way to evaluate your sales reps’ performance than to be by their side as they go about their business. Joining your reps on a sales call, be it in-person or virtual, allows you to observe them in an actual sales scenario to evaluate sales reps’ performance in real-time.

Joint calls are vital to know each individual rep’s strengths and weaknesses. They enable you, as sales leaders, to see firsthand where your reps are doing well and where they can use some extra training and skill development. You can give feedback directly, and in real-time so your reps can work on improving their weak points right away.

The same can be done over conference calls. And later on, with a tool like Call Tracker, you can listen to sales call recordings and rate them using custom tags. This will allow you to identify during which point in sales activities do the most prospects drop out of your sales funnel.

When observing your reps, consider how well they:

Establish credibility with the prospects: What phrases does your rep use to start the call? How confident are they during the interaction? How did they use marketing collaterals, case studies, anecdotes, etc., to build trust?
Listen to the prospects: Sales isn’t all talking and pitching; rather, it’s more of listening to what the prospects want. See how well your reps listen and take notes of what the prospect has to say.
Handle objections: Nearly every sales call involves tackling objections from the prospects. How do your reps deal with objections? Do they use the right words and respond reassuringly to address the prospect’s concerns? Do the prospects agree to a discovery call?
Provide a personalized solution: Do your reps tailor their presentation to each prospect or merely pitch the same product features each time? Your prospects want a custom solution and expect a personalized approach from your end, so your reps should be selling based on the buyer’s perception of value.

Furthermore, there are a couple of best practices to keep in mind to have joint sales calls that are truly effective:

Chalk Out a Plan Before the Joint Call

As with any sales call, proper preparation is vital. So, create a plan that outlines your roles as sales managers during the call, the purpose of the call itself, who is at the other end, and questions or ideas that will be discussed. Then, role-play the joint call once to ensure that the plan is understood by you and the rep.

Fight the Urge to Take Over

There’ll at least be a few instances where you’ll be tempted to step in and correct the course. Swooping in once or twice (when absolutely needed) is fine, but doing so too often will demotivate your reps. Remember, your purpose is to observe and enable the rep to succeed in front of the prospects, not create a dependency on you.

Give Constructive, Bite-Sized Feedback

It goes without saying that how you deliver feedback ties heavily with your team’s morale. Delivering feedback in a constructive manner is how your reps will be motivated to do better. Also, hearing that they need to change their entire approach all at once can be severely dispiriting, so provide feedback in bite-sized chunks and lead generation efforts gradually.

Joint sales calls provide an excellent opportunity to optimize your sales coaching as they don’t require the rep to translate hypothetical scenarios to real-life situations. As their leader, you can see precisely where your coaching efforts need to be directed for each individual rep and thus, maximize the effectiveness of your training.

Tip #5: Appreciate Teamwork and Other Efforts

Again, there are plenty of sales metrics and key performance indicators to analyze your team’s sales performance. And while impressive numbers are pivotal when you evaluate sales reps’ performance — their personal efforts, teamwork, and overall attitude isn’t something you can overlook.

Here are a few miscellaneous areas you should monitor in your reps:

Presentation skills: See if your sales reps give their best in creating and delivering sales presentations. Do they ensure each slide is error-free? Do they simply read from a script or put effort into having a two-way conversation to make the presentation more engaging?
Planning: Sales calls are all about intensive planning. The best reps dive deep to learn as much as possible about the prospect and deal before proceeding with the sales call. Planning has proven to be a vital key performance indicator in a sales organization, as it greatly impacts the average deal size a rep can achieve.
Time management: How do your reps manage their time? Are they able to tackle all their work effectively within a set amount of time? Do they use their free time to learn new tactics or skills? Time management and a drive to continuously upskill oneself are commendable traits to look out for.

Make it a point to recognize and appreciate all these efforts during the sales performance evaluation.

Also, strong teamwork is essential in sales. You don’t want an army of lone wolves focused only on hitting quota. Instead, you want a team of skilled individuals working as a unit to reach their monthly team quota and revenue goals.

So, try to assess things like who goes out of their way to help their teammates. Reward reps who promote teamwork and inclusiveness.

Tip #6: Improve Your Feedback Process

As mentioned earlier, it’s crucial to deliver feedback in a way that encourages reps to give their best and improve performance moving forward. So, apart now from being constructive and providing feedback in bite-sized chunks, here’s a three-step approach to structuring your feedback process:

Keep Doing: Start on a positive note with examples of the great work they’re doing and should continue to do so.
Stop Doing: Next, talk about things they shouldn’t do in order to improve their conversion rate.
Start Doing: Conclude with (at most) a couple of priority action items that they should start incorporating into their sales calls to convert new customers.

This way, your sales reps won’t feel overwhelmed or become defensive — they’ll be motivated to keep leveling up their sales game.

Over to You

In conclusion, there are many ways to approach these key performance indicators, but tracking the leading indicators above will go a long way to help you achieve your revenue targets.

So there you have it. Keep these six tips in mind to go beyond numbers when evaluating your sales reps’ performance, and you’ll build an unstoppable sales team that’s not only driven to sell but also do it well.

Photo by Austin Distel