Managing Sales People - What to Measure?

I have written before about "leading and lagging" indicators when measuring sales performance which you can reread by clicking here.

More recently I read "Cracking the Sales Management Code" by Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana which I highly recommend if you have the time.

The concept is fairly simple in theory but challenging in practice and based on an acronym "AOR" which stands for Activities, Objectives and Results, sounds easy right?

Their analysis of over 300 companies found that only 17% of metrics are highly manageable in terms of their activities and 24% deal with business results - it really makes you wonder what we are doing to ourselves.

Good companies, who are clear about their Objectives only measure Activities that ensure these goals are met. Nothing. Else. Matters.

Too many organisations are measuring themselves to a standstill, in one of my former lives our sales people had over 20 KPIs and never knew where to turn. It's like being lost in a maze that has no exit.

As John E Jones said "What gets measured gets done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well, what gets rewarded gets repeated".

Your team have a much better chance of achieving results when they are:

• Clear about their activities, and focus on measuring them.
• Managed well through being held accountable.
• Motivated by feedback and rewarded by extrinsic and intrinsic means.

If you would like a summary of the book please click here.