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Sales Leaders First Quarter Checklist
March 31, 2009
It is the end of the first quarter and time for sales leaders to assess their year-to-date performance against their goals and targets. After completing this assessment most find themselves in one of the following quadrants.
1. Ahead of plan on year-to-date closed business, a full, healthy pipeline and looking for ways to exceed their numbers.
2. Achieving plan and a reasonable pipeline for the rest of the year.
3. Behind plan but the pipeline appears reasonable, even assuming reduced close rates.
4. Dreadfully behind the first quarter target and a weak pipeline for the rest of the year.
Regardless the level of quota attainment after one quarter, even sales leaders fortunate enough to find themselves in the top quadrant have ample time remaining in the year to implement changes to improve their full year finish. Following are three rules for self-evaluation to help sales leaders determine where best to focus those mid-year corrections and performance tweaks.
First rule. Be honest with yourself about the factors that have contributed to the current situation. If you are achieving your plan goals, is the success from quarter one repeatable and sustainable for the remainder of the year? If you are behind on your goals, what did you do – or not do – as the sales leader which prevented your team from reaching the targets?
Second rule. Perform an unbiased, comprehensive assessment of your pipeline, which means looking at many variables and factors besides total pipeline value. Important to consider are value totals by probability, velocity of opportunities through the sales cycle, current closing rates compared to previous periods or expected averages, percentage of pipeline from existing vs. target accounts, pipeline values by region, division, service / product line, team leader and account executive, and finally, and most important for the cash flow side of the business – projected close dates. For help in pipeline analysis, take advantage of an opportunity aging report which is often underused template in most CRM applications. This report is helpful in identifying those old, perpetually pushed out deals that rarely close but contribute to a false sense of security with overall pipeline value.
Third rule. Do not forget sales is a people business. In a Sales and Marketing Times post last October, The Revenue Clock is (Always) Ticking: Three Approaches to Improving Strategic Sales Planning, a section focused on sales organization analysis. It suggested that, “historical success does not always guarantee future results,” and recommended an additional set of criteria for assessing sales rep potential using GE’s famous Vitality Curve. While yes, that still recommended approach is a worthwhile qualitative evaluation of sales people, never forget that selling is a performance-based profession. Those sales execs that consistently rank in the bottom tier rarely catch fire and become top performers. However, bottom performers are the ones sales leaders spend the most time supporting, defending and coaching. Use quarterly results as an opportunity to evaluate all sales personnel and eliminate that “bottom ten percent” that are holding back the rest of the team.
These three rules for performance, pipeline and team evaluation will guide sales leaders through an honest, objective analysis of their performance. Once completed, update the actions and goals for the upcoming quarter, then present a summary of this analysis to both the executive leadership and the sales teams themselves. This provides leaders and peers with insight into how the sales organization is being managed and demonstrates to the sales executives a focus on the details that determine success.
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