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Summary:
- Sales managers can improve accountability for teams by focusing on daily, weekly, and monthly performance metrics.
- Tools can help sales teams by automatically tracking important metrics like call activity, outcomes, and communication history.
- Tracking activities and being accountable can significantly increase productivity and income by giving sales teams data that helps with generating leads, managing follow-ups, and handling objections.
- Understanding and improving conversion rates is key. This requires analysis of each step in the sales pipeline to identify and address gaps in the sales process.
Many skills contribute to sales success—there are countless tips, tactics, scripts, and strategies that can help you connect with and convert your leads. But one of the most overlooked (and easiest to act on) is simple accountability.
By defining metrics that result in success, and using them to guide your daily, weekly, and monthly output, you inevitably make your goals more attainable. In this article, we'll talk about why accountability is so important, and how to implement it effectively within your process and organization.
What Activities Are We Talking About?
To be successful in sales you need a pipeline.
That means:
- Generating leads
- Prioritizing the leads
- Contacting them (again and again until you reach them)
- Following up (again and again as needed)
- Setting and holding appointments
- Handling concerns/objections
- Opening and closing the sale
If you don’t have a way to efficiently contact your leads multiple times, they won’t flow effectively like water through your pipeline. They’ll be slow, with unexpected blockages—like sludge.
There are a variety of studies and opinions on this matter, but my own experience, as well as that of our clients, is that on average, 80% of sales are made after the 5th contact.
In other words, the most important sales activities we do involve introducing ourselves and building a trusting relationship with our prospects/future clients.
That takes commitment, time-blocking, script practicing, and consistent follow-up!
The Benefits of Tracking & Accountability in Sales
No matter what tools you use, collecting the right data is essential. It turns out that if you hold yourself accountable and track your activities, you will make a lot more money.
Dominican University of California did a study of 250 people.
One group went through the week just “thinking about their weekly activity goals.”
A second group:
- Wrote down their weekly goals
- Tracked them daily throughout the week
- Had a weekly results accountability report
- Shared that report with others
How much more productive do you think the second group was compared with the first?
They were, in fact, 80% more productive! We’ve done our own studies on income production in sales and found that sales agents who do not track their numbers make about $60,000 per year. But those who consistently do all 4 accountability and tracking activities above can make closer to $150,000 per year.
Metrics Are Key
The right metrics allow you to analyze your sales activity and find actionable insights. But for that to happen, you need to know what metrics to focus on and why.
The most important metric to analyze is your conversion rate—i.e. the percentage of people you’ve contacted who actually took the action you wanted them to take. It’s essentially a measure of:
- How much contacting you do
- How effective you are at the contacting you do
In other words, if you contact a lot of people but can’t build trust and set any appointments, your sales will be zero.
And if you are the "World’s Best Salesperson" and closer, but never talk to anybody, your sales will also be zero.
To understand conversion rates better, let’s take a closer look at your sales pipeline.
Understanding Conversion Rates
Pipelines have a “Waterfall Effect” that shows how effective you are in moving prospects through each stage. For example:
- # of Contact Attempts, to
- Actual Conversations, to
- Appointments Set, to
- Sales Made
Looking at your conversion rate for each stage in your pipeline is significantly more useful than just looking at how many prospects end up becoming customers—because it can teach you about gaps in your process and give you an opportunity to correct them.
See Also: 11 Ways to Increase Sales Call Center Conversions
Using Tracking & Metrics to Create More Sales
Measuring accountability and progress towards weekly goals helps you see how much contact is getting done by your agents. The best way to do this is by creating scoreboards.
Activity Scoreboard
You want an Activity Scoreboard that compares the actual amount of contacts each week to the weekly goals for each activity—for every person.
This lets you view for the week, multiple weeks, months, or YTD, what activity levels are needed to produce the income you want, and what activity goals are not being met and lowering the resulting sales. This can give you the data you need to provide effective coaching and give the right kind of support.
Learn More: Call Coaching and Monitoring: How to Improve Agent Performance with Listen-in, Whisper, and Barge
Conversion Ratio Scoreboard
You can also have a Conversion Ratio Scoreboard. This can show you, for example:
- The number of contact attempts needed for 1 conversation
- The number of conversations needed to set 1 appointment
- The number of appointments to make 1 sale
And so forth.
Applying Metrics to Individuals, Teams, Groups & Enterprises
Imagine then training, managing, or coaching a group of sales agents.
You'll want them to:
- Write down their weekly goals
- Track their progress daily throughout the week
- View a weekly results accountability report
- Share that report with others
Doing these 4 things can result in up to 80% more productivity—and potentially a significant increase in income.
If you’re an individual, it’s easy enough to track what you do using paper, a spreadsheet, or a software product. But for teams, groups, and enterprises, tracking and utilizing multiple salesperson activity levels and conversion ratio metrics can be a challenge.
At KDNA or KnowledgeDNA, that’s what we’ve been doing for over 10 years.
For more information, visit our website at: www.kdna.com.
We’d be happy to have a conversation with you and answer any questions that you have.
Author Bio
Steve Strickholm and his team at KDNA/KnowledgeDNA have worked with over 50,000 Sales Agents, 1,000 Managers and 500 Teams over the past 10 years.
Their clients have included some of the largest coaching companies in the real estate industry, along with major players in real estate, mortgage and title insurance. They are expanding into other sales industries as well.
Steve has an unusual background. Before founding KDNA/KnowledgeDNA, he worked for 20 years with his Psychology License helping young adults with life-long disabilities (mental retardation, major mental illness) to find and keep jobs and housing in the community. During that time he also received his Real Estate License and Insurance Brokers License and went on to build the fastest growing Insurance Agency for Blue Cross Health Insurance in central California.
KDNA combines Strickholm's background in psychology and technology – to create a unique set of tools that leverages both individual and group talents to reach previously unobtainable goals and results.
