Nothing is more definitive than the scorecard at the end of the season for any professional sport. Right now, with the wicked one-point loss for the Celtics to the Knicks on Wednesday night, they're in a tough come-from-behind situation for Saturday afternoon's game at MSG. The absolute metrics of the losses are bad enough, but the giving up of 20-point leads in both games says that there's something terribly wrong with the team.   Metrics tell it all...all the time!

Here at Tufts at the end of the final semester for our seniors, the final scoreboard is marked by diplomas, a variety of Latin honors, research publications and that final summary GPA, which will often serve as an important benchmark for many jobs for years to come and is one of the entry keys to any advanced degrees. 

Most importantly, this process of graduation provides one's own judgement of self, how one played the game, the academic and cultural experience of it all and a level of very personal satisfaction.  

At the Derby Center of Entrepreneurship, we're graduating a record number of seniors this year!  

Sales Quotas & KPIs

For those of us competing in the ever-present scoreboard surrounding the profession of Sales, the word "quota" is life blood since it marks the formal agreement we made between us and the company in terms of whatever those metrics are that we will be measured by.  And yet, just this week, I began working with a large service company and asked the question about quota and the response was that they did not have a formalized number, but they did "measure up their performance" at the end of the year.  To me, that sounded like playing basketball without a basket or any timed quarters, which is why management called us in to set up new metrics and actual playbooks.     

We're now one month into what I regard as the most important quarter of the year, and I thought on this rainy Friday, I would just list a few of the most important sales productivity metrics we use every day. 

• First, it's our baseline that you must have performance metrics comparing where everyone is in the month and being able to compare individuals against their peers instantly at any time.  It's the very nature of what drives salespeople to perform and be recognized. 
• Without comparative metrics focused on improving seller performance, a sales manager is simply guessing as to where improvements can be made, where coaching can be enhanced, and where and how new tools and training can be introduced.  
• Just like in basketball, there are different sales functions on any team...that's what we call it "a team". In the game of Sales, the individual roles...to keep it simple, are BDRs who qualify leads, AEs who are the Key Account salespeople, and then Sales Managers who are Player-Coaches.  Each of those functions needs to be separate with separate KPIs, separate training and separate tools like Playbooks all centered at the core of "One Single Source of Truth" which is the phrase we've been using for our 20 years of working with HubSpot as our CRM and Marketing platform.  
• We have long lists of all sorts of Sales KPIs, but through our decades of improving sales productivity, these are the critical four that then become my dashboard every time I look at HubSpot which is always open, always calculating and always displaying both sales productivity and sales velocity as my primary points on any scoreboard.
  :
  
  • Pipeline Deal Count in units
  • Average Deal Size in dollars
  • Cycle Timeo of the number of days in the pipeline
  • Win Rate
  By looking at the analytics of these and then the conversion metrics of whatever pipeline I'm using, I have an instantaneous view of how the game is being played and where I need to coach or substitute any of the players. If you want to learn more about HubSpot, just contact me at any time at jack@derbymanagement.com.
  
  I need to get you and me back to selling today with the first of my calls in 30 minutes.  Best of Sales Success today! ...and just maybe spend a couple of minutes praying for the Celtics for tomorrow afternoon since right now they need all the help they can get. Having said that, the data clearly shows that they have the power, the coaching, and the players to win this series.   

It's time to update your 2025 business & Sales plans for what lies ahead

Think about taking a day out this month to tune up your business and sales plans.  Here's our free how-to ebooks for a few ideas:

"Writing the Winning Sales Plan"
"Writing the Winning Business Plan"
"Writing the Winning Marketing Plan"
"The Marketing of Me"

We outline ideas on structure, models, process funnels, productivity tools and how to recruit, hire and onboard the best people.  A few hands-on guides for real managers written by real managers with their fingers in the dirt.  

Connect with me any time at jack@derbymanagement.com and let's discuss your own Q2 plans!