Getting More Sellers to Attain Quota

The other day I read an article from Michelle Vazzana at Vantage Point about “How to get more sellers to quota” and I wanted to summarize and add a few things.

The focus is about coaching to activities because it is the seller’s activities that drive performance (i.e. hit Sales Objectives) and which then influence Sales Results.

Vantage Point talks about research about effective sales coaching involving these 3 steps – this is right from their article:

  1. Create clarity and tasks for your salespeople by making the link between sales results, sales objectives (or KPIs) and sales activities.
  2. Ensure that you structure your coaching efforts toward execution of those activities that are most critical to seller success.
  3. Apply the right level of formality to coaching, preferably the minimum amount that will get the job done.

Also, there are 4 sets of activities requiring different types of coaching:

  1. Call Management
  2. Opportunity Management
  3. Account Management – focused on managing strategic accounts
  4. Territory Management (can be managing your segmented/targeted/strategic list of accounts)

The article also states “high-performing managers ensure their salespeople are focused on the right accounts with the right message”.

The a key insight is that sales coaching needs to be more formal and structured (with time allocated on the calendar regularly) while most sales executives and managers don’t have it formalized so it happens ad hoc and produces a lower level of results and quota-attainment.