It’s easy to coach when we hear or experience one of our salespeople on a call or in a meeting with a client, like while we’re doing a “ride” along or listening to a recorded call for example. That being said, it’s simply impossible to sit in on every meeting or review every call for every one of our salespeople.
Even if we have the tech available to support us, we will surely run out of coaching opportunities if we’re only looking to interactions for guidance. That’s why we turn to a commonly overlooked place for coaching that only the best performers tend to utilize. It is known as a salesperson’s activity ratios.
A sample of activity ratios to review are:
- Prospecting touches to conversations with decision makers. For example, is it taking nine touches to have a conversation when it used to take six?
- Discovery meetings booked to discovery meetings held. Are one of our salespeople booking meetings with everyone who says, “sure, come in and tell me what you can do for me?” If so, that’s bad.
- Discovery meetings held to presentations booked. A 1:1 is not ideal.
- Dollars in the funnel from prospects to dollars in the funnel from current. Are our salespeople following through on our request for more hunting or are they sticking with farming activities that feel safe?
Ratios give us data. Coaching without data comes across as “my tummy feels like you aren’t performing,” which often ends in a conflict between us and our salesperson. This is in no way a good retention strategy, especially as it is getting increasingly difficult to find top performers.
Ratios also allow us and our salesperson to create an action plan for incremental improvement instead of them leaving our “coaching” session feeling like they need switch their performance 180 degrees. That feeling often prompts them to start spending their time polishing their LinkedIn profile instead of spending their time implementing real actions that are needed to change their ratio(s) for the better.
If we’re not currently tracking ratios, the best place to start is with one. That gives us the greatest leading indicator that the opportunities in our funnel are both qualified and likely to close within our ideal sales cycle. Usually this is a ratio in the “discovery” phase of our process after our salesperson has done some qualifying, but hasn’t invested time in delivering a presentation. For example, the ratio of discovery meetings held to presentations booked, provided it’s not 1:1, is indicative of our salesperson following our process. It shows that they are investing time with the right type of prospects as our process weeds out the bad fitting prospects before a presentation is even booked.
Attempting to lead our salespeople without ratios is like driving with our eyes closed. We may get to our destination, but it’s more likely we’ll crash along the way.
Until next time…. go lead.
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