Sales leaders are constantly focused on attaining revenue goals, which naturally shifts the bulk of their attention to top performers. After all, they’re the breadwinners who consistently achieve quota and drive revenue. The general perception is that keeping top performers successful will increase everyone else’s performance as they try to keep up.
This is flawed thinking. Core performers, or “B reps,” are a company’s most valuable asset. How is that possible? Get familiar with the 20-60-20 theory. This approach of grouping sellers finds that 20% of a sales team are top performers, 20% are struggling, and the other 60% are somewhere in the middle.
Research done by the Sales Executive Council found that a 5% increase from the middle 60% of performers yielded 80% more revenue than a 5% increase from just the top 10%. If sales leaders want to increase quota attainment and optimize pipeline generation, they have to start by improving the effectiveness of their core sellers.
What is Sales Effectiveness?
So, what is sales effectiveness?
Sales effectiveness describes the process of finding the right sales tasks to produce the best possible sales output and outcomes. For different organizations, this could mean improved profit, revenue, sales of a new product, or something else entirely — it all depends on how company strategy defines success.
Regardless of how a sales organization chooses to define effectiveness, it can only be obtained by scaling the success of core sellers, and not just the top performers. By focusing on the majority of their sales force and not only the top 20%, sales leaders receive a much higher return for their efforts.
Enablement Tools Help Scale Quota Attainment
How do sales leaders take this process and increase effectiveness at scale? Though it’s great to recognize and reward top-performing sellers, it’s more important to improve the overall effectiveness of an entire sales force. One way to accelerate this change is by investing in technology such as a sales enablement platform that provides analytics into the sales activities that are most effective.
When sales leaders have visibility into the activities that are driving progress, they can discuss which activities should be made into best practices with stakeholders and team members. Utilizing a sales enablement platform that integrates with a sales rep’s everyday workflow uncovers these best practices for everything from sales onboarding to buyer email templates.
With buy-in from sales reps, enablement teams and sales leaders can then replicate high performing behavior across the entire sales force. Once these activities are clearly defined for sales reps and reinforced through practice and technology, it’s easier for them to understand and execute — ultimately helping reps guide buyers more effectively through each stage of the sales funnel.
Core performers are on the cusp of becoming consistently successful sellers, but they need help from enablement and sales leaders to identify and execute on repeatable best practices. This doesn’t happen without an enablement tool to provide visibility into effective activities.
This Wednesday, June 12 at 10 am PST, we will be teaming up with Heather Cole of SiriusDecisions to discuss sales effectiveness best practices and how to “Fire Up Your Sales ROI by Thawing the Frozen Middle.”
In this webinar, we will discuss:
- What are the key reasons sales teams fail to meet revenue goals?
- What is a high performer and how do they behave differently?
- How to drive scalable and lasting change to achieve quota attainment for the masses
- What role technology plays in converting core performers into high performers
To learn how to increase the effectiveness of your core sellers and scale success, watch the webinar recording now.
