$195M Sales Leader Reveals His 23-Point Team Assessment System

whether you're a new sales VP taking over a team or trying to fix an underperforming organization I'm about to walk you through the exact framework we use to identify and fix the biggest constraints holding your team back you'll get a complete 23o assessment system across three critical categories your people your kpis and your processes by the end of this video you'll know exactly how to evaluate and audit every component of your sales organization and create your action plan for the next 90 days hey I'm Marcus Shan former number one sales director of synos Corporation where

I L 110% sales org to profitly deliver over 190 million tcv each year and now I'm a sales trainer and coach of the fastest growing companies and Reps in the world now after personally doing over a dozen team turnarounds I realized dur my very first turnaround I was prioritizing the wrong things there were dozens of fires put out but I didn't realize what were the actual biggest fires that needed my attention first and actually delayed my team results in mind the longer it took for me to fix those constraints I want to help you with

that today I'll be going into detail 23 different points you can use to assess your own organization and make the changes in the first N9 days get lasting results let's dive in so I'm going to use a really simple tool that we use when we're auditing sales or see how we can best help support them and there the three categories I mentioned which is the people the kpis and the processes right below and each one has many sub points so let's go and dive into people first so we're going to actually look at first the

Frontline leaders and really there's one core objectives we're asking ourselves do we have the right leader in the job that has the skills and capabilities to succeed and really there's a few different questions we're really asking ourselves here number one how effectively does this leader coach and develop their team this is one of the key skills that you have to have for that specific Frontline leader now if you're maning that team directly this is something you have to ask yourself all right then next how well do they hold the team accountable to goals expectations and

performance standards now across board I've seen all types of different leaders from the r leader with their very Grand of motivational speeches but they're actually not holding them accountable to the flip side someone who's basically just like a drill sergeant and they're not doing the other things that actually lead to a high performing culture so understanding do they hold the team accountable to goals expectations and performance standards do they Inspire and command respect from their team this is very critical because at the end of the day if they don't respect their leader that makes it

very hard for them to actually lead to long-term results how strategic are they in managing pipeline forecasting optimizing sales processes and hiring so this is a really critical one where sometimes I see a great rep who becomes a sales leader they're really good at managing their number and like driving results but they're not able to look further ahead they're not able to look 3 6 12 24 months ahead and plan accordingly so you want to uncover do they have a strategic way of thinking to be able to make long-term decisions from hiring training developing the

team to actually get long-term results are they consistently driving results in terms of team quot attainment team performance Revenue grow are they delivering on what they're supposed to be doing and then the leaders should actively Foster an inclusive environment where all voices are heard and valued and unfortunately I've been on teams personally where the leader has chosen The Golden Child of the team if you will and the rest of the team is basically just there and not really supported as well that's a very dangerous culture to build as well because it's built around one single

person and the reality is is the Frontline leaders that's where the buck stops and that's why we're inally starting this first point here because the Leader by itself even if you miss the other components that we're going to go over in just a little bit The Leader by itself can make a drastic change to really the results that the team is actually delivering let me give a really simple example years ago I just uh gotten promoted to be a sales leader in the Portland organ operation the company I was working at and for years the

team had been missing their number no one's hitting Cota no one's going to presence Club bad team culture people said nobody wins in Portland and it looked really dismal and the operations have been in negative growth for years and what was really interesting was first they actually they put a new leader in place who was amazing at Travis who actually was a guy who actually hired me to join the team but he got recruited away to a different company about 3 6 months in so I took over this team that was sadly underperforming they were

not in good spirits culture was terrible Etc and I took the team over and Implement some things we'll discuss later in this video and within a couple years we came one the top perform teams consistently and the biggest shift was really only shifting a new leader that was really it and reality was because I done so many team turn arounds at that point I just knew exactly what to fix to drive up the most results so that's why we start here the Frontline leader first because a Frontline Leader by itself can solve a lot of

problems now granted someone who can do all these things amazingly well plus these other components really really well is a little more of a unicorn those people end up starting their own business and doing their own thing eventually over time kind of what I end up doing right but at the very least you want to make sure they have these have a course skills as part of it and if you look in the sheet hey where are these other columns here so you'll see here what you want to be able to as part of your

assessment is you give a score rating now here I just score on scale one to five one's bad five is great but on top of that also a priority so this makes it very important to be able to categorize low medum high and if you put everything for high it's going to make it very hard so part of this is when you're go through your assessment and you're answering these questions you also want to answer okay is this a low mid or high priority because at the end once you go through all of it you're

going to find the highest priority ones and tackle the biggest one that have the greatest impact for you in terms of specifically solving this specific area at the end of day you can either number one if you have a leader in place can you train and Coach them to be successful and if you can't do that it might be as simple as putting somebody new into that role instead to actually already has those skills the next category which is Count executive sales Pro so really what we're asking ourselves here is do we have the right

rep the right person in the job that has the skills and capabilities to succeed we're tackling after the who first right do we have the right leaders now do we have the right reps on the team can they consistently build and maintain a strong pipeline of qualified opportuni unities can the rep effectively progress initial sales conversation to The Next Step so an 80% plus conversion to the next step how well do they execute sales conversation at all stages of a deal with multiple stakeholders now if you sell a more transactional product or service or good

obviously have multiple stakeholders but my point is more so is how effective are they with managing that deal to a close what's their average win rate okay from initial Discovery close is it greater than 25% and by the way if you're primarily an inbound team that should be greater than 35% do they take ownership of their performance consistently hit their activity Revenue targets how strategic are they in managing their pipeline forecast upline sales processes now some of you might be like hey so why is that even important that's a bigger picture type of thing here's

the reality my guess is when you're hiring someone for your team you obviously want them to perform but not just today but hopefully 12 24 36 months and Beyond and hopefully if they do a good job maybe you'll promote them within the company as well into other roles too right so if you think that way ideally they have these skills already you're going to hire someone that has those skills and then last but not least but are they delivering are they consistently driving results in terms of Co attainment team performance and revenue growth so this

is obviously very important are they delivering on their thing now here's the thing depending on what you sell for example if you're want an Enterprise sales org reality is you really want to hire someone who already has these skills now you could take time and train develop them but depending on your actual number you need to deliver you may not have enough time to try to trade and develop someone who you to get to that point now if they have these skills but maybe they're not super strong then obviously you can put training programs in

place help them develop these skills to get Mass successful so R so again contextually what you want to do next really depends on the state of the organization what you sell your sales cycle Etc next we're going to dive into sales culture and morale so now we discuss hey do we have the right leader do we have the right people on the team and then we're going to look at overall how about the sales culture and morale does the culture does the environment motivate support and retain top performers while fostering culture of growth and accountability

so we're intentionally separating this section now because if all your top forms are consistently leaving then there is a bigger issue at play here so we want to dive deeper do the Reps feel supported value and recognized for the contributions so at the end of the day I found the top reps yes for sure motivated by making money Etc but they also want to feel they are bringing value to the organization outside just delivering their number so this is really important is there a strong sense of team collaboration or is overly competitive Sil and I've

seen that with some teams where it's like a doggy dogs world they're really competitive but they're all against each other no one's really working together and that can work for driving some really transactional sales and results but long-term wise if you want to build a great organization and reduce your overall you know turnover andur and increase your profitability you need people to stay longer that's just a reality do managers and Leadership provide clear communication vision and direction for the team this is a really really important one right uh I'm in mid- audit right now with

the team and as I'm talking to many sales professionals on the team what's become very clear is there's been a lot of changes in the company but there's no communication so they see the CEO making all these changes on the company and they see it they understand what it is but they not really understand why it's being done and they're saying Hey listen like instead investing money there why not taking the money investing here is going to help us with our sales process why not take the money and get better qualified leads and so they're

surprised in terms of what they're seeing that tells me is the vision is not being communicated clearly there's not really communication not much Direction so they're floating and Silo which is not very good uh next are high performance staying long term and do they see opportunities for career growth within the company very important do the Reps believe and the compan with product Mission and values and is a team diverse in terms of gender race background experience this is so critical right having a team that does not all look and act exactly the same is very

important otherwise you have an echo chamber and team doesn't actually grow the more diverse the team is from experience gender sex whatever the more diverse a team is obviously skilled in what they do you're going to create a better performing culture that's very diverse in thought and they help each other become better over time now in order to solve some of these core issues which you really need to think about is like what can we do to implement some of these things in place and some of them are going to be very much process focused

which we'll cover in the process section and some going to be leadership focused some going to be rep focused that's going to be absolutely critical to make changes in actual culture of morocc often times it's not what you do one time it's what you do consistently that truly impacts the overall culture and the morale okay so that's it for the people section which we were making sure do we have the right leaders do we have the right people and are we developing the right culture next we're going to dive into kpis which is key performance

indicators if you do not know what that is and this is like specific things you're going to be targeting to go after specific numbers we're going to break down six key points the first one's going to be sales targets and quota objective here is are the sales targets clear motivating and realistic for the sales team to actually achieve this is what we're trying to answer here all right so you ask yourself number one are there clear targets for each month quarter and year and it's really critical here to actually have it broken down by a

quarter month and year and some people even do by week or day depending on what type of sale you do but this is very important because this helps the Reps have a very clear Target what they go after that same team I just mentioned which they not really communicating they have one clear annual Target but there's no other measurement so they don't know how they're performing throughout the rest of the year that's like watching the Super Bowl without having a scoreboard that's a very dangerous place to be no one's going to watch it there's no

scoreboard next are Sal targets based on datadriven insights Market potential and historical performance this is important to actually understand cuz for some organizations some leaders they're picking their targets by throwing a dart at the dart board and they're just hoping the Reps hit it and there has to be some sort of data points to actually make sure the math makes sense so being able to work the math backwards say all right if we do these things it's going to lead to this result and the market potential is going to be x amount next our targets

align overall company Revenue goals and broken down into actionable measurable steps so it's one thing to give each rep say a $2 million quota it's another thing to say okay if each of you do a $2 million this year our sales will do 20 mil which will help our impactor coming this way but in order to do 2 million a year you need to sell x amount each month so this is very powerful because this helps them see things at a more Grand what execute every single day every single week and then is there a

balance distribution that ensures targets are stretching but realistic I'm all about having big goals that stretch the Reps I'm all about pushing them to become better and better but it also comes to a point where if you increase it too much as the way to hit their number that can also be very demotivating as well so making sure a Balan distribution that it's going to for sure be more it's to stretch some but also they feel it's attainable if they don't feel it's attainable it's going to be very hard to get them to actually perform

to that same level now fortunately the solve here is relatively simple you just need to make sure whatever targets are being put in place are datab backed inside driven are clear and bounc across all the Reps that's it next we actually St right to activity targets and what we're trying to uncover here is our activity targets clear here and driving the right behaviors that lead to revenue generation now unfortunately I see this quite often which is there's an arbitrary number put out for the count Executives or some even for the SDR or bdr team where

it's just a number that maybe someone chose years ago and set that number so for instance they say okay every day you must make a 100 coold calls and you must send 100 emails and that's the metric we measure why is that the metric you want to understand what's a correlation so we'll dive into these questions so for instance here number one do you have clear activity targets for each week month quarter and or year here okay number two are each activity Target this could be for calls emails mean demos are they tied directly to

Pipeline and revenue generation that's really the number we're focus on which is we want more pip want to close more deals really as simple as that number three is there a clear correlation between activity metrics and actual closed deals and this is where I often see a disconnect where the top performing rep has the lowest activity but the greatest results in reality is you want to make sure everything's completely aligned to driving towards what actually drive results and then last but not least does a team the refs understand why these actually matter and how it

impacts their success because if it's more of a check the box we need to do 100 calls 100 emails a day yeah some of them might do it but they don't understand the why how actually helps get results they're not going to want to do it so you want to make sure it's completely aligned to revenue generation and pipeline generation so if your activity metrics are off here what you're going to want to do here is just do the math backwards if you know the sales targets and quotas work the math backwards so you understand

and you can map explain why they need to number of calls or demos a day to get to the results you're actually looking for the next bucket is reporting and scorecards so we're going to separate this out intentionally from the targets and activity targets because this is more so from providing reports and scorecards and we want to ask ourselves reporting and scorecards are they accurate actionable and do they drive an improvement in performance this is so vital this is the scoreboard analogy I mentioned earlier with sports team reality is for any sport you might watch

just imagine they move the scoreboard would you watch the the game game if there was no scoreboard chances are you probably wouldn't I personally would not so we want to ask ourselves here do reps have visibility into their own performance metrics in a way that motivates them to improve can they access it consistently and easily to see how like where they stacked can managers quickly identify coaching opportunities Performance Based on score card data this is really key to be able to look at the data based off this dat is being provided for me I can

make decisions on how I'm going to coach manage each rep or the team to actually improve their skills to go towards hitting the numbers want to hit are are the right metric being tracked focusing on leading indicators that's activity pipeline health and lagging indicators such as Revenue quot attainment this is key so it's not about measuring more kpis and more numbers it's about measuring showing the right ones actually motivate performance is reporting automated accurate update in real time minimize the need for manual data entries for some companies out there and hopefully you're not one of

them if everything's completely manual so they don't trust the data it takes forever to do they're not going to do it they're just not going to do it so you want to make sure it's very easy for report to be either sent to them or they can pull it out or they look at it very easily when they log into CRM so they exactly where they stand our scoreboard is being visibly shared and discuss a public accountability session on a consistent basis to drive changes and behavior this is a very important one some leaders and

some teams just live by slack and email or Microsoft team they send the scoreboards out at least at least they're sending out which is good right but here's the reality your reps are busy on calls talking with the prospects they might glance at Etc but how much energy folks are going to put into that int score some reps a lot some of them are like what I another scorecard so this is why it's really critical that there is AE of accountability and some sort of meaning where that's being discussed every single week so for instance

I ran a Monday sales meeting in that Monday sales meeting each rep is discussing the perform prior from an activity metrics but also a soul metrics as well so this way is is a constant public account of building scorecard that everybody sees how everyone's performing we also pull up team ranking so everyone sees exactly where they stand how performing to their targets which is very vital as well and last but not least our scoreboards easy to read and understand within 5 Seconds of viewing what you don't want to provide is a scoreboard that has like

a million lines of data they have to filter through just to see their own data you want your reps to be able to look at the scorecard and very quickly like all right I'm doing a good or bad job I need to change my behavior not change my behavior this is really important let me give you a really simple example a couple cors gos working with an organization with they miss around for a long time but they did not really have any type of scorecards or reporting for all the activity metrics to close metrics and

all those details that you need in between so we put together a very simple kpi scorecard that the Reps would just take a few minutes to update every single day and here's a beautiful part by them consistently updating just maybe 30 seconds update every single day we started seeing Trends and performance improvements right by the end of the 90 days that team end up selling $1.7 million in new business on a million doll quarter quarter in pipeline literally 10x as a result because now they had had clear metrics are measuring and they knew everyone's looking

at it and it drove them to perform at a higher level this is the power of having a clear scorecard reporting because it drives performance okay next we're going to go over to C customer acquisition cost and sales efficiency and really the objective here is asking ourselves are sales efforts converting Revenue in a cost effective way without unnecessary waste all right are we generating at least a dollar in new revenue for every $1 spent on sales and marketing is our CAC customer acquisition cost align with Revenue goal in the payback period expectation are we closing

high value deals efficiently or we spending too much time on low value customers are our current sales and Market investment yielding strong sales returns so that means your sales efficiency is greater than what is our sales motion scalable mean that increasing investment sales will prly drive more revenue and depending on what you going to cover here this may mean many different shifts within the organization to actually lower your ca and actually improve your sales efficiency the next category is going to be sales cycle length here we're asking ourselves are deals moving through the pipeline efficiently

and closing in a reasonable time frame and we don't find out is the average sales cycle length in line with industry benchmarks and deal complexity so this is really important because obviously if you're selling an Enterprise sale average deal is a million dollar plus you cannot compare it to a transactional 10K 10K a year type deal all right you also want to cover hey where are deals getting stuck in the pipeline and do we have a clear strateg to actually accelerate stall opportunities is that internal issues that's causing to get stuck or is it external

the prospects are reps effect qualifying PRS up front to avoid wasting time on deals will never close are we using automation pre-sales report and streamline processes to speed up deal execution our deals closer faster for top performing reps compared to the rest of the team what best practices can be replicated ultimately our goal here is how can we compress the timeline of deals and there's many ways to solve these issues just depending on which specific area has the biggest problems the next point we going to cover is going to be wind loss analysis the objective

here is a sales learning from past deals to improve wind rates and refine their sales strategy so this is really key so number one do we have a structured process analyzing why we win or lose deals are we tracking and categ wind loss reasons pricing product fit competition sales execution timing are insights from the wind loss analysis resulting in using that to teach improv sales strategy training and mess think about this if you're consistently winning deals in a certain say ICP what's your team consist doing well that could be taught to the rest of the

team on the flip side if you're consistently losing deals why is that what could you do differently to actually improve results do we incorporate direct customer feedback from Lost deals to refine our approach and our win rates improving over time as a result of our analysis and adjustments next we're going to dive right into processes which is the third overall big category and we many bll points hit on here so let's dive right into the hiring first so first we're asking ourselves from the hiring perspective are you attracting selecting hiring the right talent for long-term

sales success there's a few different points I want to check into here so is there a clear ideal how ing profile that lists out skills and competency of a top performing salesperson so this is very important to understand hey are we clear on who what top rep looks like for our company is there a structured repeatable hiring process that consistently identifies top performing sales candidates are cand assess both skills and cultural fit using a standardized evaluation method are real world scenario role plays of Behavioral inter being used to evaluate cand true selling ability and are

candidate showing proof via a brag book or proof of their acttion ual past successes so being able to Showcase and show hey here's the top rankings here's how I perform here's recommendations here's reviews about me here's emails and slacks from customers talking about how great they perform here's like letters from internal external Etc and depending on size of your organization when you look at top performing organization that consistently grow for instance like the company cnos where I was at for several years they had this process on lockdown and they had a very clear hiring Prof

they wanted to go after on top of that the interview process was aligned to all these things so they had five core steps so number one they had a screening interview Bas kind of pre-qualifies the potential hire then the first interview was with the hiring manager they're all behavioral questions so was diveing into specific questions asking for specific examples that they could Showcase of how they're good right at that point you're also looking at the brag book and SC see how good they are now I also would inject a role play at that point live

with them in their situation to see how well they perform and I just make sure that I could see their skills live in action as if they work for their current company trying to sell to me and then we actually had a full day in-person field R meeting they came to the office they got to see a sales meeting or trading meeting they got to hop on the phones with the sales team in the bullpen they also got to go in the FI with the rep and ride around and see meetings and meet with prospects

live so we can see the skill they got a coold call they got to see a full day of exactly what top forming rep does and this really helped us back to the next level and then we had another interview after that with a different stakeholders with in the company and then a final with the sales VP so this all have multiple perspectives anywhere from the hiring manager to the HR manager to the general manager to even the top reps to get all their Insight so we get a cohesive picture hey is this the right

person for our company now it's not perfect by any means because also still prone to human error but when you a consistent process it increases your chances of hiring the right person now once you're hired you got to make sure the onboard properly is well so the objective here is asking yourself are new hires ramping up efficiently and positioned for long term success this is the foundation that you must have in place to ensure they're going to be successful right so is there a clear structured onboarding program with clear milestones for new sales hire how

long does it take for a new hire to become fully productive start closing deal this is really critical because obviously the longer it takes for them to ramp and perform the longer delay results but on top of that they take too long they start to get in their own head because they haven't performed for so long at that point our new hires receive receiving Hands-On coaching roleplay opportunities and reward sales exposure early in the process this onboarding cover to not just Pro knowledge but also the sales process competitive positioning and customer pain points and problems

unfortunately most onboard programs I see are heavy in product knowledge and they don't teach you anything about actually how to effectively sell to those personas in ICP so you want to make sure it covers far beyond that do new hirs have a clear plan for the first 30 60 90 days with accountability checkpoints and the better onboarding you have the faster people start getting results so for instance even for my own company we have a very robust training program when we on board someone new that in the first 30 days we're teach them everything you

need to know to be massive successful in every aspect of the role literally by week two they're already hopping on Discovery calls because there of the training on board we're setting in week one so literally by week two they could be moving deals forward closing deals by literally week two so it's all designed intentionally because I remember being thrown in places with zero training zero onboarding and remember struggling for months and remember seeing other people struggle as well and I just knew if I could just install a better onboarding up front it could solve a

lot of problems on the back end next we're going to dive into sales training the objective here is asking is a sales training provide effectively developing reps and driving real performance improvements so we want to ask ourselves is a sales train pris ongoing and reinfor forced or is it a one-time event during onboarding or once a quarter does training focus on Real World selling SK like Discovery objection handling and closing unfortunately I've seen some of these sales teams are putting together and oh we train them on products at the end of the day if the

products could sell themselves without a salesperson the company would just offer it that way and they wouldn't hire salese are the train sessions interactive Incorporated role plays call review and pure feedback so this is really critical is it a PowerPoint slide to death or the inter active and making sure they truly engag to actually change habits and behaviors of the Reps our managers actively involve in reinforcing strength and coaching and followup I want you to think about the top forming sports teams they don't just train one time and hope their team is going to be

great and win every Championship no they train nonstop why because they know how important it is to develop those habits is training Effectiveness measured based on improvements and sales performance conversion rates and quot attainment reality is if your company your Oran is already put in training in place but it's not changing results and behaviors you got to ask yourself is a training truly effective or is they check the buck the next point I want to check into is going to be the sales meetings I'm going tally separat out from sales meeting versus a training meeting

all right so our objective here is are sales meetings engaging productive drive better performance all right so realistically are the meanss being done on a consistent basis is there a clear structure to the meeting is there a clear agenda focusing on a Clear Vision performance strategy skill development does each rep review exactly where their numbers are where they stand comparison to their targets is there a Cadence of accountability this is wildly important when they have to in front of their peers discuss how they're performing this creates internal pressure that internal pressure is far greater than

any external pressure you put on them because at the end of the day you have them perform for themselves and not for you but sometimes when they see how other people are doing comparison to them this does break some of their limiting beliefs so for instance one of the teams I was working with they implemented just a very simple scoreboard because they had about 80% of the team that would constantly complain about the market the competition and all the uncontrollables but the 20% of the Reps were crushing it who were also selling the exact same

markets so interesting part was when they can see a scoreboard consistently oh man like these two reps are so consistently crushing it it's becomes very clear okay there's something that they're doing that I'm not doing what could that be how can I improve my game how half the battle of managing sales teams is making sure they're fully aware of what they're weak at and helping them build a plan to actually solve those challenges do means provide actual insights and coaching to help reps improve their results it shouldn't just be a bunch of housekeeping items like

can I get something you have to cover some kind of overall housekeep but can you make sure it's value add so they walk with more skills and development are top performers sharing best practices and struggling enough to receiveing constructive feedback so it should not be you or your Frontline leader on a soapbox preaching athlet them it should be an interactive engaging meeting where everyone's contributing you want to have that Rising tide that lifts All Ships mentality is the energy engagement High keeping motivated accountable so again this is really important for the energy and if action

items are set from the meeting are they they're follow ensuring the mean drives real improvements this is something for sure that you can Implement little immediately which I recom having that every single week so this way the team has a vision I personally like to have a Monday morning because this way I can control how the rest of the week went for them and say hey here's the vision here's your focus for the week let's get after it next we're going to break apart training meetings now I intally separate apart because this is a separate

meeting where literally your objective here is asking yourself hey are training means developing skills reinforce best practices and driving measurable improvements and I want that single meeting focused primarily just on that so you ask yourself are training meetings being conducted on a consistent basis ideally every single week some people might need daily depending on what you guys sell on the team that you're running is a train mean focused on a specific skill or challenge that directly impacts sales success so it should not be the Frontline leader walking like all right guys what are you going

get trained on at the end of the day most people are unaware of their own weaknesses and they need a third part to look at them like oh man we're really struggling with this so the leader needs to have that Vision to be able to see like all right our team is strugg objection handling let's work on objection handling do the training means involve active participation such as role plays call breakdowns or live selling scenarios so again some I mentioned before it shouldn't be a PowerPoint to death this should be very interactive where there's role

plays there's interaction and they're practicing their skills here cuz at the end of the day the game is one not in front of the prospect it's one in training what you do with a team leading up to it determines how perform actually on the field it's align with current team challenges Market shifts and data D Performance gaps so it shouldn't be just a random pick later or train talk again it has to be calculated it must be very intentional so this way you're actually improving the rep's performance do manager top reps AC participate reinforce and

demonstrate best practices so one of the things I consistently did for every training I ran is I would teach a principal I would role play with them and I have a rep be my Prospect and I have them be tough on me and intentionally I have them be tough on because I wanted to show them how to actually implement the framework I was teaching so this way they knew that oh wow okay he actually eats his own dog food for a lack of better term so when you show them that there's actual skill behind and

they need develop those skills it's very empowering for them so this is really really critical and then of course you want to make sure everyone's engaging because this is how you change behaviors and change habits it's not about consuming a power it's not about consuming a video is about what you do with that content that knowledge is a training Effectiveness measured based on real Improvement conversion rates pipeline grow or quot attainment so again what's the goal here to get results so your training should lead to that are reps able to walk away and immediately apply

what they learn to get results if they're not able to consistently that means the trains are far too high level it's not Tactical enough you want them to be able to take what they learn and literally either that day or the next day or that week be able to immediately apply what they learn to the real world this is how you change habits for the long run otherwise it goes in one year and out the other next are one on ones these are one of ones a Frontline leader has with the Reps every single week

the objective here is do reps walk away KN exactly where they stand the gaps in performance and exactly what to do next to improve perform performance so you got to ask yourself number one are the one ones happening consistently and view as valuable as both the manager and the rep sadly I've been part of many one of ones where it feel like very much check the box and you don't want to be that way it should be an engaging development conversation is there a structured agenda that includes a performance review deal strategy and skill development

sometimes I see some leaders they wait until mid year or end year to do performance review your reps your team needs to know exactly where they stand at all times there has to be clear conversations because this is how you actually change and improve performance our manager using one on to coach reps on specific opportunities and skill gaps so again this is that moment to really shine to help that rep become the best version this is that time where it's just them there's nobody else it's you and them or your sales leader and them this

is the opportunity to really improve and make it real impact on their lives and ultimately when they change what they do that will change results they perform for you are one-on On's customized to each rep's needs strengths and Development Area again they show me check the box depending what they struggle with they need to walk away with very clear action items it's going to help them next okay and last do they leave with clear action items and next steps for improvement this is very important because this is how you run a high performing one1 so

should not be check the box should be very clear hey this is where you are this is where you stand here's where you need to be here's what we can do to help you get there and if they're already performing at super high level great how we help get the next level next we're going to dive to professional development so are the Reps invested into for long-term success and grow to Stronger sales professionals and Future Leaders we want have a longer time Horizon to look at your reps CU reality is the longer you could retain

a high performing rep and develop through the organization it'll reduce your overall cost of trying to acquire new talent but on top of that it make you far more profitable and it helps build better and longer culture so you ask yourself is there a clear path for career progression with Define milestones for reps to advance in their roles often times most reps think they need to just perform and they'll get promoted performing is just one part of the battle what are other things you want to see out of each person to get to that next

level to get promoted to be a sales manager director or even and beyond that our reps receiving continuous learning opportuni Beyond sales skills such as leadership business AC and personal growth the reality is as you probably know sales skills is one part of the equation there are other skills that they may need to develop depending which what type of role that they're going after next if they're an SMB rep want to go into an Enterprise rep role those are very different sales skills you must develop if you are rep and want to go into a

leadership role again very different skills so you want to ask yourself how do we develop those people and provide a plan in place so they increase their skills across the board so this way we can make sure they stay for the long run do managers actively mentor and support reps in achieving their career goals this goes back to when I mentioned the people perspective you must be a long-term thinker as a Frontline manager to think about hey how can I make sure my people are going to become leaders of leaders over time so that means

that leader when they understand they're developing them at a whole new level that's beyond just selling more business are top performers given opportunities to take on leadership mentorship and strategic projects what I often find is top reps generally are left alone which is good and bad to some extent which is hey just keep doing what you're doing which is fantastic but a lot of them actually yearn to continue growing because over time they EV get bored of their role they get bored of just constantly winning I know it sounds strange but they want a new

challenge that's very normal for top performers and one of the best ways is to lever their discretionary effort into giving them strategic things to work on that's going to make them better depending whatever their goals are for instance if you have a rep who's consistently crushing and they want to eventually lead the sales organization hey what can you do to help develop them I'll give you some examples of what I personally did so some of my top reps I'll actually have sepal one on with them and I'll teach them how these certain skills that I

knew would help them teach them how to read a p&l i' bring them to internal meetings with other leaders I would actually train them on on how to run sales run training meetings right and provided structure for them to grow and develop I sent them to conferences my point is I saw them as an investment and I want to make sure I developed beyond the sales skills make sure they were going to be a great professional across the board and last but not least is professional development see as a core part of company culture with

investment in books courses trainers coaches events and external learning this is also very important because again your number one asset is going to be your people but there has to be a process in how you actually Implement these things now we're going to dive into call reviews and field rides the field rods are more so if you have a in-person sales team you're actually in the field in car with them you or it could be call reviews when you're listening to calls or you're literally hopping on Virtual Zoom calls or teams calls with your reps

with customers all right so you want ask yourself are call reviews or ride alongs in person or virtual happening consistently as part of the coaching process the reality is most sales people talk a really good game and they will sell and convince you on why deal is going to happen or not happen whatever and the best way to see what the truth is literally see what's happening when they're actually on calls whether it's in person or virtual so is that consistently happening our leaders providing structured constructive feedback based on actual calls and meetings this is

really really important right I had a field sales team for four half days a week I was in the field with them riding and literally meeting with two three different prospects with them during that time I also was in the bullpen with them listening calls jumping on calls helping them with calls as well so I could really see and have a pulse on the market this is actually really vital because this allowed me to coach more effectively but also this gave me ideas for even the training meetings on what I need to help the team

with do call reviews focus on key selling moments Discovery objection handling and closing this is really key so sadly I've seen some call review feedback from leaders where it's like oh good job keep on going well reality there are specific fundamental things that have to be done on the call to improve their sales skills are you coaching on that or is your Frontline leader coaching on that are reps given clear action items after review and proove a specific area of the sales conversation it can't just be like hey ask better questions on your Discovery all

right see you later it should be very clear hey when you get to the point about understanding the buying process here's five questions let's start asking in every single situation let's role play together okay next week let's see how we do here and every call the rest of this week I want you to work on asking those five questions does that sound good great so it's really clear that AC is going to help them drive towards an end result this is also a big one too which is are positive behaviors being recognized and reinforced cu

is a lot of them do a lot of great things too and sometimes I've been on the receiving end where I get only the critique and none of the positive stuff so I'm not even sure was the other stuff good this is really important to be able to reinforce and recognize what they doing really well that's why I usually do a 3X3 rule which is first I have them share what they believe went really well and then I'll say hey here's three things that you did a great job with I'll get really specific you did

a really great job with this specific thing so for instance hey the conversation totally pivoted where they went down a rabbit hole and you do an excellent job when they got done talking addressing it looping it back and bringing it back to why we're actually on the call that was so smooth great job with that so we're getting really specific to reinforce Behavior we want to continue to see and then we give three things that are very specific and very tactical they can literally apply on the next call right after our top performing reps calls

analyz and share examples of the team so most teams have zero idea of what good looks like and definitely not what Excellence looks like so when you have these great call recordings share with team but Point specific things that you can show the team of what they do really well so this way they can duplicate those things next we're go to recognition does a recognition program effectively motivate retain and drive high performance this is a clear process if you don't have a process for recognition chances are pretty good you probably not recognizing the people all

right so you want to ask yourself is a recognition program designed to drive the right sales Behavior longterm success and this could be anything from a pres Club a Winner's Club an iron eagle whatever you want to call but there should be clear recognition programs that are formal in place to really drive towards that and it doesn't have to be anything crazy we say much on a trip it could be even simple as the number one rep gets X spiff or bonus or just gets this type of recognition whatever it's going to be but it's

really clear and it's going to drive the right behaviors right do they understand the Reps do the team understand the exact criteria to achieve recognition and is it perceived as fair and attainable if it's just like an unknown then that's not very fair so you want to make sure it's really really clear are top performers publicly celebrate in a way that reinforces a culture of Excellence so this again is very important so if it's just are they win these like a gift card that's really it and there's no real recognition outside of that that will

just fall to the wayte just a waste of money so you want a way that reinforces this is what Excellence looks like and we want to see more of this does the program offer meaningful incentives this could be Financial experiential career growth that truly motivate the Reps so this has to be something they actually want are there different tiers in time frames for recognition so for instance an annual one could be present's club and a corly one could be Winter's Club so this way if someone's not pacing hit PRS Club but they still have a

couple winers Club Quarters which is high number to hit as well great that's still really nice as well now this is a big one aside from like a formal recognition program for some of you out there you might be like we're not big enough to have something like that that's okay does your manager have a Cadence of recognizing the Reps for other results behaviors consistently throughout the year this be something you literally create that's designed to drive performance and I'll give you a really simple example the prod out was great because they had ready set

things for presence Club they things for Summit Club so it's very clear hey you hit these numbers and you're in the top percentile for each category for the quarter for the year whatever right and that's great now what I thought would be very useful and because they would also send out a a monthly report it's just a report so you had to open the report up there's like thousands of reps on there and it would show like who's on Pace for presence club and I thought that's useful most reps number one AR can open up

not going to filter down and see where they stack so when I became a director that I can make sure there clear visibility so I want to make sure I recognize people that were pasting and we always had month end numbers that were very accurate so what I did was literally every month we built out a presence of Club dashboard and we had a very simple email that went out cuz I had a big remote team it had pictures of all the Reps exactly who was pacing for presence club and we put the picture on

there and we recognize them every single month so this way not only did they have the one from the the company which is like this crazy long report plus a quarterly report which is I'm just not going to look into it they this monthly thing that got sent out they could see exactly where they stood right and on top of that what I would do is for all the people that were pacing I would print out that very pretty slide had all the pictures and I'd write them a handwritten personal note and I'd mail it

to their office and what was amazing was like after my first year as a director at 85 plus employees and most people would send maybe six to eight people to qualify for president Club I over doubled that my first year and it's because this level recognition was definitely a key comp they knew this is what everyone's looking at this is a recognition piece and they absolutely loved it and the cool part was because I actually did physical sign things with notes I would went to visit their offices I would see that thing like taped up

in their cubicle because they're like they're getting recognized and it was cool because I met some of their spouses at Presence club and they would tell me they like oh wow we saw that that was really cool you did that every single week we love that that or every single month that was really cool so and on top of that to really hit Hess point because again I didn't spend any money on just time of just having my admin put together this thing and we just sent out just my time of just signing it's all

it took right like even one year we sent over 25 people a qualified to presence Club my or and I remember literally on my stage of presence Club my senen like how do you have so many people like they were L like shocked that someone has sent so many people over to presence club right again a big part has to do with having those type of recognition programs so this one of those things where it's very easy to not do but when you done it really well even somebody's informal recognition can be really power very

motivating as well next we're talk about compensation so is a comp plan Fair Ming Al line with business objective so you may or may not have impact on the compensation plan but if you do let's check the section is the plan designed to reward the right behaviors and long-term success not just short-term wins do top performers have the ability to earn significantly more than the average low performers okay is a plan simple transparent and easy easy for reps to understand is there a good balance to between base and variable pay and accelerators are compensation and

cor expectation regular reviewed and adjusted based on Market condition and Company goals does a comp retain top performance in reality this is if you don't have any power on this it is what it is but if you do have power on this is making sure hey it's going to lead to the right things we're driving towards for our business next we'll dive in technology and again you may or may not have impact on this as well depending on your influence in your organization but does a tech stack enhance productivity improve decision-making Drive Revenue growth hey

are all the sales Tech that you're actually using being fully utilized by reps and managers does a Tex teack streamline workflows and reduce manual work for reps is there clear visibility into pipeline Health sales performance and activity Trend through reporting tools are the tools seamlessly integr other systems do leaders regularly value and optimize the tech stack based on team needs and performance impact all right so here reality is is if you have power over this it could be either you're getting rid some a tech bloat or you add a new tech in or you're switching

out some tech to make sure it actually drives revenue and improves productivity next is lead qualifications hey objective are rep spending time with the most qualified opportunities so this is where it's more so like you want to understand like is sales and Market align to what a defined qualified lead is that's the ICP the demographics the intent signals so it's they really clear they both aligned number two are the leads being properly scored and prioritized based on conversion likelihood is there a clear timely handoff process between sales or marketing to AES and do reps have

a structured qualification framework with like ban or medic to Suess lead quality so this is really important because your team could have thousands of leads each but if they're not properly segmented and qualified they may spin their wheels with the wrong prospects next are sales playbooks you can see here a lot of these procs are stacking upon each other in different components and this is a critical one because the objective here is are there structured talk tracks objection handling and value props document into to A playbook this is really really important because this allows consistency

across the organization do all the Reps have access to a structured sales Playbook with clear messaging best practices are talk tracks value props and competitive differentiators well documented tested do reps know how to handle the most common objections effectively is the Playbook messaging regularly updated based on Market shifts competition and feedback do the Reps feel confident using the playbook in real sales conversation into driving better results and doesn't not to be anything fancy it could literally be a Google doc that breaks down the core components that you need inside there so they know exactly how

to win this is literally showing them what good looks like every part of their role for Success so let me give you an example of the power of playbooks we working with the client recently in which they dug into basically the audit results and realized very quickly that their team is really good at the more transactional role so or transactional deals so like the 10K SMB Deals they go pretty consistently as a team about 25% win rate so decent as a team overall as an organization so they can close like clockwork but once the deal

has pass 100K their win rate went down to 5% so they were losing a lot of deals and they realized pretty quickly they had a pretty good playbook for the transactional SMB deals but from a midmarket Enterprise segment perspective they really don't have a Playbook so we were closely with them to formulate this Playbook formulate their process and really train the team on the Playbook and give the skills for success and within 6 months average deals has went from 10K to 250k that's a 25x Improvement in average deal size and the win rate for Enterprise

deals went from 5% to 25% this is the power of a really clear playbook for the organiz could allow for scaling and they're actually in process right now raising an extra $10 million now because of their consistent success so pretty wild but that's the power having to clear playbook for sales all right last but not least the point of turnover here you want to find out is is turnover a symptom of deeper issues or a healthy level of attrition that improves team performance all right ask ourselves is turnover primarily voluntary so reps just leaving on

their own for better opportunities or involuntary so there's underperformance your last this tells you potential other root problems depending what it's going to be what are the most common reasons reps leave and do we have data from exit interviews are we experiencing higher turnover than industry benchmarks and how is it compared to other competitive organizations and do top performers stay with company Long Term or are they leaving at the same rate as average or low performers so this is a really important category to look into because you can learn a lot from the turnover component

years ago I used to think that having zero turnover was good I'm like why would you want to save everybody and I remember I took a team from 60% turnover consistently that was really quite bad to 0% turnover my first year and we had pretty good result we still hit our number Etc right but we weren't quite in elite team and that's why I realized we had some people on a team there other they performed but they were actually hurting the culture in fact they had the skill fit they had the results but culturally very

negative they talked down to everybody a jerk frankly they just weren't a good person overall unfortunately right so that same year I started coach out some of these people that were basically hurting our culture and our turnover went from 0% to 20% that year but here's what's interesting even though we had more turnover and we new people on the team we still had far better result I think we increased result by an extra 50% that next year and we won team of the year so that's why it's good to have a a balance of turnover

CU you want to make sure you're keeping the best people and the people that don't make it you're churning them out over time time all right so there you have it my full 23 Point sales organization assessment now if you want our help to assess your or to help Implement some of these changes you can book a call below and if you want to see the results of what happens when you assess your team properly and implement the right solves and solution check out my interview with Dustin Phillips where 100% of his team hit their

quote and became the number one sales leader at a billion dollar SAS company check it out right here