Sales Effectiveness Goes Beyond Sales KPIs

Due to the challenging and dynamic nature of sales, it can be difficult for executives to nail down goal-setting and strategic sales development initiatives amongst their sales teams when there are many paths to success and many external variables outside of a salesperson’s control. Still, however, organizations need to implement the right tactics that ensure their sales departments are productive and show strong sales effectiveness.

But how can you find and understand sales effectiveness beyond just sales KPIs?

To help measure your sales teams for sales effectiveness, we’ve put together essential sales competencies and metrics every sales leader should look for to reach optimal performance amongst their team.

Uncover Core Competencies

The Caliper Profile is a powerful assessment tool that helps you better understand individual strengths and inclinations. Not just a tool for hiring, the Caliper Profile can be used to help get a better picture of the different strengths and abilities that exist on your sales team. Combined with our competency report, they paint a clearer picture of what actions you can take to develop successful salespeople.

Here’s an example:

Consultative Selling requires competencies like Active Listening and Information Seeking with a particular knack for approaching sales with a Service Focus. Do you have someone on your sales team who loves to build relationships with their prospects and provides guidance through the process? They might be well suited for a consultative selling role.

Examine the key roles within your sales team and how they align to the skill sets that your salespeople possess. Does your method of selling match up to the soft skills of your team?

Here’s another example:

Account Development differs from sales hunters or business development in that this role seeks to expand business within existing accounts rather than acquiring new clients. Account Development requires someone who has Organizational Savvy, meaning they are adept at gathering and assessing information about the organization and speaking specifically to their needs. Do you have a salesperson who doesn’t hunt particularly well but is very persuasive in an organizational context? It might be effective to move them from a new business role to existing accounts.

How to Develop the Right Talent, the Right Way

Once your sales manager has a better understanding of the competencies and potential of their team, it’s time to put it into context. How can managers train and develop highly effective salespeople with what they’ve learned in the Caliper Profile?

The Essentials for Coaching report provides a Competency Report that goes through each of the competencies considered important to sales effectiveness. Within the report are suggestions based on how an individual scores in each category. If they score low on the team building competency, for example, their report outlines which aspects of teamwork they should lean on— meaning the aspects of teamwork where they show potential—and it suggests possible challenges the individual might face when dealing with teamwork in aspects where they aren’t as skilled.

Conversely, If an individual has high potential in teamwork, there might be no challenges listed, and managers can identify that person as someone to tap when they know teamwork will be required or they need someone to help them rally the team around a cause.

The Competency Report helps put an individual’s traits and competencies into the context of their role and what will need to be coached, leveraged, or where they’ll need to focus to develop key traits. The report also includes recommendations for the manager to help them guide training and development goals and help boost their sales effectiveness while honing their skills.

Here’s an example:

Your Account Development Specialist shows strong Organizational Savvy. The competency report will recommend that the manager helps this person consider the outcome that they are hoping to achieve when they speak with clients. Client feedback helps the salesperson identify what their organization does well, where they want to improve, and what their desired outcome is. They can adapt their approach based on real feedback from clients, and you’ll find their sales effectiveness increases.

So, where do you begin?

Start with competencies where your salespeople have high potential. Leverage their strengths to target their challenges. With their potential competencies laid out, it should become clear how you move forward based on what they do well and how those skills can help them address others.

The Competency Report puts those competencies into a workplace context, allowing managers to see where their personal preferences lie and different strategies to avoid in order to implement better development objectives that fit into their work style and person inclinations. Managers can come up with tailor-made goals for individuals to increase productivity effectively and efficiently than singular training programs implemented across the board.

Sales effectiveness isn’t just the number of wins or closed deals; it goes beyond numbers and into personality. The Caliper Report can put crucial personality data into context and provide managers with insights that lead to better sales effectiveness across their team. Reach out to our experts today to learn more about the Caliper Profile or how a Caliper Subscription can help your sales managers transform their team’s effectiveness.