Building Elite Sales Teams
If the Great Resignation has taught us anything, it’s that higher salaries and benefits aren’t the only drivers of employee attrition. In sales, where seller careers and company revenue alike are made and broken one quarter at a time, the effects of high attrition and poor performance can immediately impact the rest of the business.
Unsurprisingly, one of the most significant topics on revenue leaders’ minds is how to build, scale, and maintain a robust sales organization. When leaders have to continually over-rely on a few star sellers to hit the quarterly target, it can leave desperate sales managers figuratively looking under the sofa cushions for extra change.
Ask a CRO what execution looks like across their team, and you’re likely to hear a similar analysis: there are a handful of top performers who “just get it,” some low performers who are probably in the wrong job, and a sizable pool of middle performers whose success can trend one way or the other depending on the quarter.
Imagine if a CRO could increase the efficacy of each middle performer by 1% month over month. The incremental gains add up to an elite group of sales athletes forecasting more predictable pipeline and growing with the organization instead of dragging behind the ship like a broken mast.
When we asked some of the industry’s top-performing revenue leaders how to pull this off, this is how they answered.
Skill vs. Will
Companies can hemorrhage sales talent when there’s no formal career path or coaching conversations to get them from Point A to Point B. For that reason, it’s never too early—no matter the size of your team—to start the skills assessment process. The best leaders think future-backwards: where could the seller be three to five years out, and how can we help get them there?
A simple assessment framework may start by identifying:
Where is the seller now on the Skill-Will matrix?
Where do they want to go (and how does that map back to the organization’s goals)?
How do you get them there?
How do you track against that plan?
ExecVision explains the skill vs. will difference as “(s)kill is objective. You have concrete KPIs and best practices to measure against. Will, on the other hand, is more subjective and can only be uncovered through one-to-one conversation and observation.”
If an experienced mid-market sales rep wants to move into a strategic enterprise selling role, for example, a Skill Will assessment can identify which skills the rep will need to learn and improve and whether or not they have the necessary desire to do so.
Broken down, that looks like:
High Skill / High Will — the rep has solid skills and is highly motivated to do what it takes to make the move
Low Skill / High Will — the rep needs support from their manager to polish their skills and has the desire to learn
Low Skill / Low Will — the rep needs to polish their skills but has no desire to do so
High Skill / Low Will — the rep has solid skills and therefore may think they don’t need to learn anything new
Coachability is critical. CROs want to surround themselves with sellers and managers who can take feedback because the most effective sellers are learn-it-alls, not know-it-alls.
The problem with the latter two categories in the Skill Will matrix is that the Low Skill / Low Will worker was probably hired for the wrong position and may better serve a different part of the organization (if at all). The High Skill / Low Will worker may be someone who was previously motivated, but something happened that caused them to close themselves off from being fully engaged with the organization.
Great leaders don’t ignore these people but use their feedback to glean broader insights and identify potential patterns within their organization.
Decoupling Skills Assessments & Performance Reviews
Every sales manager is responsible for conducting performance reviews with their people. However, performance against quota measures contributions to revenue growth, not the growth and development of the individual seller.
Rolling out an effective Skills Assessment program can be very difficult when sellers, who are used to being under the unrelenting pressure of a target, confuse the assessment program with another way the organization may be trying to review their performance. Top-tier CROs own the command of the message by making the objective of the program crystal clear: to help with individuals’ career development and professional growth, not as a more circuitous form of a PIP.
One CRO noted a few reps asked him point-blank, “What if I assess myself poorly and my manager thinks I’m no good at my job?”
Effective revenue leaders understand that their sellers are a naturally cynical bunch. Acceptance may take time. Some reps will get it after they hear the objective three times. For other reps, it’ll take 20 times.
Internal Alignment Is Key
No matter how experienced or skilled the executive is, no one can elevate an entire organization on their own. Best-in-class CROs know that the whole organization—from the Board down—benefits from having a high-performing sales team. That’s why they won’t hesitate to secure support from the CEO.
With the CEO’s buy-in, CROs can then work with Human Resources to put frameworks and tactics in place. This may include asking specific questions in exit interviews and analyzing what motivated the former seller to leave the organization. In addition, skills assessments need to be standardized and integrated into the hiring process.
Developing a framework with HR can ensure all recruiters are leveraging the same assessments and providing a uniform recruitment experience for potential new hires.
Once revenue leaders have solved for the recruitment, onboarding, and offboarding processes, they need to tap some extra shoulders on their teams to assist with execution and measurement. When building out curricula and certifications, there’s no better-positioned team than the experts in Sales Enablement to get it done.
Work with Sales Enablement leaders to, as one CRO explained, “Identify who has the highest propensity to succeed within that framework. What does each rep need to know to do their job, and what do they need to do to grow and develop in their career?”
Finally, CROs must pay extra attention to how well their first- and second-line managers execute their portion of the skills assessment program. Even the CROs in our group admitted how easy it was to lose track of email and projects that weren’t directly tied to performance on quota.
If that’s true for the head of the revenue engine, it’s doubly so for the sales managers underneath them, some of whom are first-time managers themselves. As good as skills assessments are, they still need first- and second-line sales leaders to be able to coach their people in a consistent manner.
It Feels Good To Win
Teams that win together stay together. When salespeople feel that their company is invested in their professional growth, attrition slows, internal promotions increase, recruitment costs plummet, and NPS scores rise.
Good CROs navigate deals and customer conversations to increase revenue. Great CROs do this as well but also emphasize getting to know their people and understanding what makes them tick.
By elevating and upskilling the middle performers, best-in-class revenue leaders can not only exceed revenue targets but also cut down on the skyrocketing costs of attrition and the drain on resources caused by poor performance.
What is the Numentum CRO Playbook?
A community-sourced guide that enables new and existing revenue professionals to quickly get up and going, optimize existing processes, and win in the Age of Buyer Experience. These aren’t theoretical insights: all information sourced herein has been provided by experienced Chief Revenue Officers from different industry verticals and company maturity stages.
See something you’d like to comment on or contribute to? We’d love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at info[at]numentum.com with the subject line CRO Playbook. You can also contact us here.
