Sales are arguably the most measured community in your business.
We track their activity, the number of meetings they conduct, the volume of calls they make, how many keywords they used in their pitch, and so on and on, yet they are typically only as good as the last quarter’s results.
But how do APRs benefit sales? Is measuring the sales team to an inch of its life going to provide any tangible benefit? Or will it simply take time and focus away from what is actually important: creating a more proficient sales team.
What does sales get from the annual performance review?
We’re on record about the banality of the annual performance review and have had several interesting conversations around this topic with colleagues and customers alike.
We attribute much of the challenge of the annual review to the lack of objective measurement and the misuse of subjective measurement. Understanding how salespeople behave today vs. how you need them to behave to deliver your strategy can best be determined through the use of a competency model – however, they rarely work.
Here’s some thoughts as to why that happens:
The operationalization issue
By far the most common challenge is one of operationalization. Let’s describe the top 10 symptoms and see if you recognize them:
a. Sales has job families
b. The model has roles related to the families
c. It has levels within each role
d. It has a description of what each competency is
e. There is an agreed cadence of annual performance review in Q1 each year with a mid-year check in
f. KPIs are derived from the annual corporate goals as laid out by the leadership team, then sliced down at each level by function, team and role
g. It has a spreadsheet to capture results
h. Bonuses, pay rises and promotions are tied to the criteria of the model and performance KPIs
i. Included are a set of corporate values which span all roles, in order to make sure there are a common set of competencies for everyone to be rated against in addition to their KPIs and role-based competencies
j. Managers have been taught how the model works
So you are all set then, right?
With keen anticipation, you roll out your shiny new model, you wait for feedback and lo and behold, there is no change in behavior.
You do some digging and are told it’s great. Well done you.
After a while you start to hear some unofficial feedback via the rumour mill. These are a selection of our favorites from our clients:
· Yeah, it’s ok but we just pay lip service to it…
· It’s just not relatable to the jobs we do…
· People are feeling excluded by the process…
· It doesn’t matter how well I perform, I’m on my manager’s blacklist…
· The corporate values are not relatable…
· How can I measure being positive! I’m naturally a low reactor so it’s perceived that I’m negative…
· I’m very analytical so I consider my responses privately and analyze data before responding, which leads to a perception that I score low in the corporate value of ‘Speed’…
· I do my job really well, but there is no career progression here…
· There’s nothing in this for me and it is meaningless…
So what is the reality?
Increasingly in today’s world, perception is becoming the reality. The perception is that for most, the annual review is not a positive experience. At best, it’s a gating factor to potential reward, and at worst makes the individual feel undervalued because they cannot achieve their goals. The commonality we have found is simple and falls into a few big challenges:
1. The competency model at the heart of the annual review doesn’t deliver an outcome and is often deployed without context.
2. It relies upon an individual’s manager’s ability to deploy it in a meaningful way.
3. It is often rolled out in association with activities which are not about development.
4. No one thought about what is in it for the individual – it’s all about what the company wants from them.
So, why do we do this? Because we don’t want to force the sales manager into having yet another one-to-one activity with the team – as if that’s a bad thing.
Operationalizing success.
We have found that communication, structure, and salesperson ‘buy-in’ are the keys to successful operationalization of competence frameworks within sales groups. You must:
· Work out what the organization seeks to gain from a competence model
· Demonstrate what is in it for your salespeople and get their buy-in; this must start from the top!
· Ensure the model is relatable to the actual activities that the salespeople do to be successful in their roles. Find a well-known high performing salesperson to advocate that the behaviors are right and what they do whill attribute to their success.
· Ensure your sales managers understand the value of the model not just to the organization but to them and their teams.
· Enable the managers to have the right forms of discussion with their team members.
· Provide a structure that supports the managers and their teams so that the competence framework becomes the centre of their development conversations in a truly everyday way – not just annually.
· Most importantly if you want to operationalize a model properly it must have a place in the organization and a value to the participants.
