Slice it and dice it any way you want but there are basically two things to track to determine if your sales rep is gettin’ it done or just going through the motions.

• One, a minimum list of calls, appointments, etc. to be done each day.
• Two, sales figures over time.

One, a minimum list of calls, appointments, etc. to be done each day.

No magic formula here, just do something! Make it realistic requiring just a bit of a stretch everyday but don’t overdo it. Talking to total strangers all day, every day is a grind and even the best can burn out. Paying someone a salary never justifies a fast-track to burnout.

Determine a realistic number of phone calls, follow-up calls, quotes or bids, letters, etc. to be accomplished each day. That target list of activities will have to be adjusted downward as new accounts requiring time and attention away from those prospecting activities increases. Just make sure the list of expected activities gets done every day.

Two, sales figures over time.

An average sales benchmark for the average sales rep in your industry can usually be found. Try your industry association, a friend in the same business, a competitor in another, non-competing territory, or your own prior experiences with sales reps in your company. Once you have a benchmark you have something solid with which to compare your current rep’s results.

Keeping in mind there could be any number of economic, market, and competitive factors adversely affecting your comparisons, what can you learn from comparing the performance of your current star against the benchmark?

Your reps sales figures are beating the benchmark. This could mean your benchmark numbers are below average, or you just may have a top-performer on your hands. Take a look at his daily activities and see if he’s doing more than the daily minimum. Is there something about his target prospects that might account for it? It may mean that your rep is a top-perfomer because he’s highly effective at what he does.

Your sales rep’s figures are below the benchmark. Either your rep is not doing a consistent job of meeting minimum daily activities, he’s targeting the wrong prospect profile, or he’s ineffective at what he does and may need additional training in presentation and/or probably closing.

Being effective, or ineffective, in sales is all about finishing the job. An adequate job of engaging the prospect, diagnosing a problem you can fix, but failing to ask for permission to proceed will produce good activity numbers and poor sales. Some reps love to engage and talk a lot but never quite get around to asking for the order.

There are many other things you might track but they all fall under one of these categories so before you shoot off in a random direction measuring things that have little to do with the root problem, monitor your rep from 30,000 feet with these two, simple to track metrics. Then act on whatever the numbers are telling you to do.

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