The goal of any salesperson or sales manager is to do one thing: make their number, hit plan, achieve budget, whatever term you use for success. If that’s true, why is it that, depending on which study you read, between 40 and 55% of all salespeople fail to hit their annual goal?
A study by CSO Insights, a highly respected sales research organization, found that 87% of senior sales leaders said improving overall quota attainment was their top priority. So what stands in the way? We have studied sales organizations for years and identified three key issues.
1. CRMs that don't drive behavior
Over the last ten years, many sales organizations have implemented comprehensive CRM systems expecting them to drive revenue, yet 74% of sales organizations report poor CRM adoption, according to CSO Insights.
We’ve asked hundreds of sales leaders, "Is your CRM driving sales behavior?" Nine times out of ten, the answer is no. Don’t get us wrong. CRMs are important tools and every company needs one. But adoption has been low and the impact on performance disappointing. As Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling, put it: knowing what your CRM does is important, but knowing what it doesn’t do is even more important.
2. Sales managers have been neglected
In his book Cracking the Sales Management Code, Jason Jordan points out that companies have spent millions of dollars training their salespeople while often neglecting their sales managers. Managers are frequently overwhelmed with data and can easily be confused about which data is most critical to success. What they lack is a clear, actionable view of what their salespeople are really doing.
3. Too much focus on trailing indicators
Many organizations make decisions using information about the past. How did we perform against last year? How are we doing against plan? That information matters, but it is history, and I can’t change it. I can only change the future.
One of our leaders, Steve Mulch, remembers his boss calling and asking, "Steve, what are you going to do to save the month?" In reality, the month was lost six months ago. What is possible, and critical, is for the manager to know that salespeople are doing the right things today and tomorrow to secure the future.
An actionable pipeline is the best tool
The best pipeline is filled with plenty of qualified first appointments and a confirmed next step with each prospect, and that next step is in the prospect's calendar.
My own experience has shown that 50 to 100% of sales pipelines don't have a confirmed next step. Daunting. And remember: there is no such thing as a company that prospects too much.
Originally published on LinkedIn on November 24, 2016.