Are You Measuring Your Rate of Improvement?

Good morning!

It’s sheer craziness here. Did I tell you that we’re moving? To a new apartment here in Manhattan. Anyone want to buy a used bike?

Not So Subliminal Ad for The Sales House.

"Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.” Benjamin Franklin

Sales Thought of the Day

What’s the point of raising quotas if your sellers haven't increased their capabilities to sell by at least the same percentage increase?

What’s the logic behind increasing individual quotas by 5% if your sellers haven’t similarly improved their sales capabilities by 5%?

Here’s a question for sales leaders: what data are you using to measure if your sellers are ready, or capable, of selling more (from one year to the next?)

Sales analysts like CSO Insights have been reporting for several years that the percentage of sellers hitting quota is dropping in B2B sales. We’ve all heard that.

The typical knee-jerk response is to blame the seller.

However, I believe this “quota gap” is more reflective of a growing “readiness gap.”

A readiness gap meaning that companies are not appropriately investing in the development of their sellers at a rate that keeps pace with their target revenue growth rate. Thus, sellers are not ready to hit their targets.

I know that many sales leaders associate the term readiness solely in conjunction with on-boarding new reps.

However, a sales career ideally is a progression from entry-level to skilled professional. Each step along the way requires a different level of readiness.

In the era of the data-driven sales culture, it seems to me that we need a metric for capabilities and readiness and the rate at which they change.

Then, if leaders want to arbitrarily increase quotas at the start of a year, at least they would have data to illustrate how big of hole they’ll be digging for themselves.

If anyone has such a metric they use with their sellers, I’d love to learn about it.

- Andy Paul