5 Ways to Help Your Sales Reps Make Quota

Why are enterprise sales so dismal?

Approximately 40% of all enterprise sales reps don’t make quota! That’s right, you heard me! Only 60.9% of sales people achieve quota each year (Source: HubSpot)! Why is it that with all the modern tools and methods that fewer sales people are succeeding.

Sales may think it’s because the customer is more empowered and is pushing them out of the buying decision. Yet, according to HBR, that’s not so. In fact, there are MORE buyers engaged in the process today (6.8, up from 5.4 just a few years ago, according to CEB) and they want help from knowledgeable sellers who understand their specific challenges.

So if these buyers actually WANT educated, helpful seller engagement, and sellers have more tools and customer information, what is wrong?

We aren’t doing what we need to as sales leaders, and reps are too often taking short cuts. We can’t just blame the reps. Sales leadership needs to take a hard look at what they need to do to improve sales quota performance in their team.

Here are some of the top ways to improve quotas, compiled by my own experience, and validated by experts.

Share the data sales needs

CSO research has found that despite all the sales enablement hype, the majority of organizations are pretty old school in how they share content. Are you still emailing salespeople the content they need, or burying it on an intranet? If you can get sales people the right content at the right time, they’ll use it. Conversely, I’ve found the worst case scenario when they’ll freewheel if it takes too long to find what they need.

Develop a real sales methodology, and use it

According to CSO Insights, The more mature the sales methodology, the higher the average quota attainment. A designated sales methodology acts as a guiding principle around which you can build your sales values and processes. This sales methodology should then go hand in hand with your coaching strategy. What’s that? You aren’t taking time to coach? CSO Insights found that those organizations with a mature sales methodology that met or exceeded expectations, out-performed those that didn’t by 22.9% That’s a big number.

Coach your sales reps how to prepare, and give them time and tools to do it

The key words here are homework, preparation and personalization. (Source: CSO Insights)

And don’t expect your reps to do it on their own, role play with them. How many hours a month do you set aside for role play? And role play isn’t just for new reps. Role play when you have new solutions, new markets, or new campaigns. Here are Mike Kunkle’s favorite types of role play to give you some ideas.

Clean up your email content

Your email is spammy. There, I said it. Many teams I see still think that more is better when it comes to email. Today’s buyer really does want you to do your homework and know their needs. And if there are 6.8 buyers at each company, I wager your team isn’t touching all of them with what each specifically needs to hear.

Do more than product training

Your reps don’t like training, you say? It’s time consuming? Expensive? It’s time to invest. If 40% of your reps aren’t making quota, then it’s likely they are just pushing product. Mike Kunkle offers some great advice on how to design scenario-based solution training that differentiates your company and product. It’s painful to see reps who are still feature pushers.

These are just a few of the things you can do to ensure more of your sales team hits quota. If you’d like more ideas, reach out to us and we’ll put together a plan for you.

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