Getting to the root cause of productivity levels

Like many businesses in the current economic climate, Salesforce has been shining a spotlight on the productivity of its sales team, after the company’s COO revealed that 96% of its annual contract revenue was achieved by just 50% of its sales account executives.

There are clearly lots of factors that could play a part in this alarming statistic, after all times are challenging and working practices have changed a lot of the last few years. In a recent interview Marc Benioff raised some questions specifically around remote and younger employees asking “Are we not managing our remote employees well enough? Do we need new skills?”.

He also raised questions around their ability to build customer relationships and wondered if they "are not having the kind of social experience and meeting folks and getting the kind of swivel-chair enablement we used to have."

Now, given we are talking about a company that has made its name in helping organisations to manage their information, we are sure that Salesforce is not short of its own data so not only should it be possible to get answers to these questions but also to do something about them. For example, had they ever assessed the competencies of the 50% that were performing and worked out where the other SAE’s needed to develop?

“Top performer analysis is essential if you want to build a benchmark and picture of where you'd like all reps to be. Without one, strategic decision making is flawed,” commented e4enable’s CEO and founder Kate Lewis.

“I'd like to see if they had mapped 'what good looks like' across each sales role, from skills, behaviours, processes, etc. Once they assessed everyone against that map, were there common themes across the higher performers that were not present in others? What did their leading indicators suggest? The focus this can bring to sales enablement and the direct impact this can have on productivity and revenue is significant, particularly when the alternative in many instances is layoffs.”

Benioff also hit the nail on the head when he raised the question about new skills being needed for the modern sales force and hybrid working environments. This is not the first time that he has raised questions about how to get the best from a remote workforce, having also sent a message on the company Slack channel in December.

It is undoubtedly true that building relationships with prospects and customers requires different skills in a remote world. The use of video calls for example alters the dynamic of a conversation, the ability to read body language and build a rapport so the communications skills needed for the role must adapt. Similarly remote working often requires a different approach to planning and organising and some people might require additional support to manage their own time and priorities in an unsupervised environment.

“Sales competency frameworks are a valuable tool but this is a good example of why it is important to review and refresh them regularly,” Kate added. “The shift to hybrid or remote working has had a significant impact on the skills an employee needs to be successful but not all changes are this significant. The environment in which sales teams sell changes all the time so it is important to ensure your competencies reflect this so that you can equip your team with the right skills, behaviours and knowledge for success.”

e4enable makes it possible for sales enablers and leaders to identify the competencies driving their best performing reps and focus on other sales reps’ gaps in these areas. It guides you in the steps you might want to take to address the gaps as well as showing the impact they are having on revenue and therefore the potential gains that can be made.