Another Terrific Metric to Track Salesperson Effectiveness

One of the biggest challenges for presales staff can be working with sales people who don’t “get it” with respect to the need to do sufficient Discovery prior to demos. Previously I offered a metric that helps separate the great vs. good vs. not-so-good sales people by measuring the dollars-of-revenue per number-of-demos done. In this case the more efficient and effective sales people will have larger numbers. Another good metric to track and measure is the number of demo meetings booked in comparison with the number that actually take place on the original dates. Very often, sales people will ask for a presales resource to be assigned for a particular date, but then that date moves (sometimes several times!). This impacts the entire organization negatively, as that presales resource could not be used for other opportunities (that might have been better qualified, with better Discovery completed, and a much higher likelihood of coming to fruition). With the less effective sales reps, we would often see requests for multiple dates for demo meetings for a single customer. Those dates often slipped and we received requests for new dates… In one infamous case, one rep had tied up presales resources for a full two-week window without ending up with a single meeting! (What a sad waste…).