As a Sales Manager, How Should I Spend My Time So I’m Maximizing the Value I’m Delivering to My Reps?

Well, that depends on where you are in your year and how your reps are performing. Let’s go ahead and start at the beginning of a new fiscal year. You’ve got your list of account targets in hand and you’ve assigned them to various members of your team, but now what?

You need your reps to account plan and get their targets into highly-personalized outbound cadences as quickly as possible; preferably in the first two weeks of the year because the faster you start this process, the sooner a sales cycle starts, which means the sooner deals start closing, which maximizes the time you have available in the year for selling. Wow…mouthful, but true. We covered best practices around that topic in this guide: Proper Account Planning: Winning the Outbound Cadence Personalization War

From this point on, there’s only two key metrics you need to pay attention to as you’re evaluating your reps’ performance:

• Pipeline: Is my rep generating enough pipeline to hit the bookings target I’ve set for him or her? Every organization has different pipeline targets, which are traditionally multiples of what your bookings number is. So, if your rep has a target of $1.25MM, and you know, based on historical performance, that you need to have 3.5X pipeline in order to hit your number, then there should be $4.375MM worth of opportunities in the rep’s pipeline. If this isn’t the case, then you know you need to make sure you’re coaching the rep on how to drive more pipeline through various prospecting activities
• Win Rate (Bookings): Is my rep winning deals? If you’re seeing an overabundance of losses, slipped deals, or excuses for why things are not closing on time, this is an indication that you have a sales cycle control issue on your hands. There are two types of sales cycle control issues:
  • • Deal Strategy: Basically, in this situation, the rep may have the wrong strategy in place (selling something that’s not meeting the customer’s requirements). Has the rep documented the prospect’s evaluation considerations? Ensure the rep is paying attention to the customer’s needs and is providing a personalized and meaningful experience that’s helping the customer solve the challenges they’re looking to solve. This seems like a no-brainer, but I can assure you it’s a problem that I see quite often that’s very easily solved for with coaching and discipline.

• • • Deal Process: Is the rep systematically driving deals to a close by using buyer maps and close plans? If not, then you likely have a deal process challenge on your hands, which is an opportunity for coaching. We all know that most reps don’t do these because it’s too time consuming. FYI – Forecastable takes away this objection and makes it easy for reps to build and maintain these.
      
      

As a Manager, How Should I Structure My Weekly One-On-Ones With My Sales Reps to Maximize the Value I’m Delivering?

Below is what we believe is the most effective sales one-on-one structure. This could also be done bi-monthly if weekly is too often for you and your team. 

For the first weekly one-on-one of each month, spend 15 minutes going over the numbers. It’s important that everyone is on the same page about what the targets are and where gaps need to be filled. This looks like a lot of information, but all of this data is easily available and can be prepared in just a few minutes of work, immediately prior to the one-on-one meeting.

By The Numbers: 

Current Year:

• • • Annual Quota: $1,200,000
    • Target Pace: $256,000 
    • YTD Closed/Won Bookings: $273,000
    • Annual Bookings Gap: $927,000
    • Remaining Open Pipeline (through end of current fiscal): $2.1MM
    • Target Pipeline Multiplier: 3.5X
    • Actual Pipeline Multiplier (Remaining Open Pipeline/YTD Bookings Gap): 2.26
    • Pipeline Deficit:  $1.15MM

Current Quarter:

• • • Quarterly Target: $275,000
    • QTD Closed/Won Bookings: $26k
    • Quarterly Bookings Gap: $249k
    • Actual In-Quarter Open Pipeline: $1.256MM
    • In-Quarter Open Pipeline/QTD Bookings Gap (Pipeline Multiplier): 5.04
      
      

Here are the comments and coaching opportunities I would bring up based on these numbers:

1. 1. You’re ahead of the target pace, but not by much, so let’s keep an eye on that.
   2. You have 5X pipe in the current quarter, but just a little over 2X for the year. With such a healthy in-quarter pipeline, you’re in store for a great quarter, but you’re going to need to increase prospecting activities to fix the current pipeline deficit of $1.15MM for the rest of the year, otherwise you’re likely to fall short at the end of the year. What’s your plan for filling that gap?
      
      

If reps know this line of questioning is coming every month, they should be presenting these numbers to you as their manager. They should be able to self-identify their challenge areas and self-prescribe resolutions. Getting to this stage is a big accomplishment for any FLM. Once achieved, the FLM can then begin spending more time on deal specifics instead of top-of-funnel activities, which is a much better use of time.

For the rest of your one-on-one, you should be focused on deal specifics. To help hone in on which deals you should focus on first, use your Forecastable evaluation plan dashboard. This will help you quickly identify deals that are potentially at risk. We recommend focusing on those first, then moving on to the rest.