As a sales leader, you’re not just tasked with overseeing your team’s activities and performance – you’re charged with optimizing the results. Through coaching, you can do just that. The key is to impact performance by calling upon relevant data as you guide your reps to hit higher win rates. Here are five key metrics that can drive more meaningful coaching and better outcomes.
1. Response Rates
At what rate do prospects respond to your sales reps’ outreach? It’s well established that prospective buyers do not respond well to cold calls and cold emails. However, if your reps are taking advantage of warm introductions or are leading with insights when they reach out, their response rates should be respectable.
To help lower-performing reps raise their rates, tell them to request introductions through their extended networks, and send personalized InMail as a follow-up to a warm introduction. They should also focus less on pushing a sale and more on building connections and being seen as trusted advisors.
2. Profile Views
The number of social profile views indicates the strength of reps’ social presence by showing interest in their online profiles. While it’s important to make sure your salespeople are connecting with the right people, social visibility tells you how much effort each rep is putting into building their online network. If that growth is slow, encourage them to develop strong, complete profiles and start engaging prospective buyers in relevant online channels.
3. Connections Per Account
How many contacts are your reps connecting with per account? If the purchase of your product or service requires decision by committee, it’s essential that your reps are connecting with all the right people within the account. Instead of following through with only one prospect, coach your reps to go deeper into the buying team’s structure, creating and building many relationships.
4. Pipeline Attrition Rate
How frequently do prospects fall out of the pipeline? If this number is on the high side, figure out at which stage the leaks are occurring. Early-stage attrition could indicate the need to bolster the ability to follow up with value – such as by leading with insights – while later-stage attrition could point to the need for better managing objections and gaining commitment to change.
5. Average Time to Close
If the time to close deals is longer than your typical sales cycle, figure out at which stage opportunities are getting bogged down. Coach your sales professionals to position themselves as a magnet for prospects by developing a strong professional brand. Then show them how to build relationships by leveraging networked connections to get warm introductions, or by monitoring their prospects’ profiles to address specific pain points with timely insights.
Work with them – or pair them with marketing – so they know how to publish, like, and share content online to establish themselves as valuable resources. That personalized attention helps the salesperson build a trusting relationship with prospects that paves the way for interactions and conversions.
In all cases, social selling can help boost your sales professionals’ performance. Your job is to guide them on the best practices for establishing their personal brands, building a network of relationships, identifying the right contacts within each account, and leading with insights. Get that formula right, and your team’s win rates will be the next metric that improves.
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Topics: Sales management
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