How to Evaluate Your Sales Team When Things Slow Down

By Robert Estupinian

In my last post we began to discuss the different ways that organizations can evaluate their sales teams in order to determine if they are producing at optimal levels. The best thing about these comments is that they are applicable to any size business regardless of the size of the organization.  Yet, often these vital steps are ignored in hopes of getting a quicker result. So let’s continue to review what you can do in evaluating your sales team.

One of the first things to consider is to take an honest look at the market you are selling in and what is truly happening in that market. The prolific writer and marketing expert, Dan Kennedy, once stated that “the best marketing could not overcome the worst economics”. In other words, there are times when the decrease in sales results is due to market conditions rather than under-performing salespeople. I once came across such a problem while consulting with a central coast company. This particular company was concern that one of their top salespeople were no longer producing the numbers that they had produced for years. Upon doing a review of the market place we determined that this salesperson was actually bringing in 82% of all the available business in that market. In fact the market was so bad that many of the competitors had since left the area for greener pastures. This salesperson had not only survived but actually had taken over much of the market share left behind by the competition. When we now explain the same results under this new view we can see that this salesperson was actually exceptional rather than a slacker.

A second step to consider is doing a proper evaluation of the lead generation system to determine if the program for obtaining leads is still valid. This step needs to be evaluated for both the organization (if leads are generated through a central program), and for the individual salespeople (if they generate their own leads). As I stated in the previous post, this is where we want to make sure that quality is being looked at rather than quantity. About a year ago I had the opportunity to work with a real estate brokerage in California who was complaining about the amount of listings that their agents were getting especially given the fact that this firm was purchasing a lot of leads. Upon reviewing the source and quality of the leads, I soon discovered that the leads were no longer qualified leads. In reviewing the program I found  that only about 1 in 30 leads would become a listing. The sad thing is that the broker owner was spending in excess of $6,000 per month to obtain these leads. A similar situation occurred with an insurance agency that was providing leads to independent insurance brokers as a way to induce them to sell their product. Upon doing a full evaluation, I discovered that these brokers were signing up to get the leads but then were using those leads to sell other products. Once we were able to make a few modifications to their program the number of new brokers signing up for the program dropped in half, but the number of sales also doubled. So taking the time to evaluate this area of your business can end up not only saving you money, but also increase your profit.

We will be continuing to discussing these issues in the next posting.