How to Use Data to Set Your Salespeople Up for Success

Managing a sales rep or a team of sales reps can be very different than managing almost any other employee. By its nature, a sales rep’s position is fluid and ever-changing. Still, providing a certain level of structure for your salespeople can help them reach for and attain goals you have for them and the team.

 The big question: How do you determine how much your sales reps should be accomplishing in terms of leads and project quotes? Luckily, the building products industry is filled with data that can be used to help you answer this question.

Before we get into specifics, note that setting daily activity goals is not the ideal method. Weekly or monthly goals are a much better option when you consider that a sales rep’s day-to-day routine may vary greatly.

Calculating Sales Rep Goals

As an example, let’s say your sales rep sells vinyl windows and doors. These are  common building products that are easily tracked. Last year, your rep sold $1.5 million in windows and doors, and you have determined you want to see a 15% increase in sales from this rep this year.

$1,500,000 x 15% increase = $1,725,000.

Therefore, you are expecting them to generate $225,000 in new sales this year.

The first thing you need to determine is how many quotes and orders your salesperson produced to achieve the $1.5 million in sales. Let’s say they did 400 quotes and that they closed 100 (or 25%).

$1,500,000/100 (sales) = $15,000 per window and door package.

We now know that your sales rep closes 25% of their job quotes, and each sale is an average of $15,000. With this information we can determine how many quotes your sales rep needs to produce in the coming year.

$1,725,000/$15,000 (average sale) = 115 sales.

We now know how many sales your sales rep needs to close. Assuming that they are going to continue closing at a 25% rate, we can use this number to determine how many quotes they need to produce (with an average of $15,000) in order to achieve the new goal.

115 x 4 (25%) = 460 quotes this year.

So, your sales rep needs to generate 60 more quotes than they did last year. If we divide the total quotes by 49 weeks (allowing for three weeks of vacation) in a year, we get 460 quotes / 49 weeks = 9.38 (let’s round to 10).

Therefore, we now know that to achieve a 15% sales increase for the coming year, your sales rep needs to quote on average 10 window and door packages per week.

This is just one example of how you can use established data to provide activity targets for your sales reps. The same types of calculations could be used to determine any of a wide variety of activities, such as phone calls or meetings needed to produce this number of quotes and subsequent sales.

One note: Producing the data needed to do these types of calculations requires you to have an accurate tracking system. And remember that it is important to always be transparent with your sales teams about the goals you have set for them and what you feel they need to do to achieve those goals.

Rikka Brandon is a nationally recognized building industry recruiting and hiring expert, and best-selling author. She helps building industry business owners and leaders solve their recruiting and retention challenges with strategy, best practices, and access to experts. Whether or not you’re looking for in-house training and coaching for your team or an expert to provide consulting, you can learn more at www.BuildingGurus.com/Informa.