How to get your entire sales team performing like your superstars
Calculate your stage-to-stage conversion rates
Summary
Many startup sales teams have a couple of superstar reps that consistently crush it and a larger group of reps that struggle to hit quota.
Unpacking the sales process into stage-to-stage conversion is an analytical technique that reveals which reps are struggling where, and why.
The insights you get inform where to improve the stage entry and exit criteria in your sales process.
Changes to sales process are always more successful when you show your salespeople how it benefits them individually.
The Problem
A very common problem in startup sales teams is having a couple of top performers consistently hit quota while the rest of the team falls short. Quota attainment by AE looks like this:
In a situation like this, many sales leaders explain the success of their top performers as being down to their tenure in the role or just being “great salespeople”, and explain the struggles of under-performers as being down to ramping up or not being a good “fit”.
Some sales leaders also try to surface what the top performers are doing differently, through qualitative activities like call shadowing and deal walkthroughs, in order to motivate the rest of the team into following suit. However, this can lead to mixed results as its often just a bunch of one-off tactics.
Fortunately, there is a simple, analytical way to get the root of the problem by unpacking the sales process at the team and individual rep levels and using the insights to inform changes to the sales process.
Step 1: Unpack the Sales Process
Consider a typical sales process with 4 stages: Discovery, Demo, Proposal and Negotiation. At any stage a deal can either be lost or move forward to the next stage, eventually resulting to a win. Like this:
If you track the last stage a deal was in prior to it being closed, you can figure out the stage-to-stage conversion rate - aka the % of deals that convert from one stage to the next. Here’s a real-world example from a company I recently worked with:
Doing this immediately surfaces that the weak point in the current process is the proposal stage, as only 58% of deals are surviving proposal compared to the 71-84% survival rates for the other stages.
Losing deals in the proposal stage is a common issue, especially in “high-velocity” inside sales teams where leaders emphasize high activity, as it causes reps to rush to get proposals in front of buyers without doing adequate discovery.
Taking the above analysis one step further by drilling down to the individual AE level gives us additional insight into what the top performing reps are doing differently from the others.
Step 2: Drill down to the Individual AE Level
Repeating the stage-to-stage conversion analysis for each AE, you get to the following data set:
Now you can see that the 58% proposal rate is being driven by the 4 underperforming account executives (AE 3, AE 4, AE 5 & AE 6), who are only moving 33-56% of deals through the proposal stage compared to 80%+ for the superstars AE 1 and AE 2.
By looking upstream at the stage-to-stage conversion rates for the discovery and demo stages, and looking downstream at the survival rate for the negotiation stage, we can start to zero in on the 3 root causes outlined below:
Root Cause #1: Not probing for buyer pain points before giving a demo
AE’s 5 & 6 are moving a higher number of deals through Discovery but then losing them during Demo. This tells you that they aren’t probing deeply enough to understand the buyer’s pain points during Discovery and rushing straight into a generic demo.
If you shadow their calls you’ll find they are doing the demo during the Discovery call and using the buyer’s reactions to the demo to pick up on pain points. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t get to the root of the buyer’s pain because it focuses on you the seller rather than they the buyer. It also makes you more likely to miss asking basic questions like what challenges do you have and what happens if you don’t solve those challenges. (For examples of the types of questions to ask, read my post on how to get your buyers to tell you everything you need to close deals).
The way to solve this is to ensure the buyer’s pain points are documented as an exit criteria for Discovery, so that your reps can’t move into a demo without them. This puts your reps in a position to succeed because they can tailor the demo to the buyer’s top pain points.
Root Cause #2: Not identifying the buyer’s deadline prior to sharing the proposal
AE’s 3 & 4 are moving the same volume of deals through Discovery and Demo as the top performers (AE’s 1 & 2), but then losing a higher number during Proposal. This tells you they aren’t identifying the buyer’s deadline before putting forward the proposal.
If you listen to their calls you’ll hear friendly buyers, who are generally responding positively and not putting up any real objections, giving the illusion they are ready to buy. However, just because a buyer requests a demo through the website doesn’t mean they are ready to buy.
The way to solve this is to ensure the buyer’s decision timeframe is documented as an exit criteria for Discovery. If a buyer is just kicking the tires, don’t waste time putting together a proposal for them as they’ll either start backtracking or just ghost your reps once you ask them for money.
Root Cause #3: Not identifying all parties in the decision making process prior to proposal
AE’s 4, 5 & 6 are losing a higher number of deals in Negotiation. This tells you that the reps aren’t identifying who else is involved in the decision making process and aren’t getting them involved early enough.
In most deals, the person requesting the demo is not the person who approves the purchase, nor are they the person who approves the contract terms. If you ask your rep about the status of these deals you’ll often hear its “stuck in legal” or “on the boss’s desk” but that they’ve never spoken to the legal counsel or the boss.
The way to solve this is to make sure all parties in the decision process are identified as an exit criteria for the Demo (or even Discovery) stage. Ideally you want all parties to be aligned on their pain points, desired impact and timeline for making a decision before you start prescribing solutions in a demo and certainly before you put together a proposal.
Step 3: Implementing the changes
Now that you know which changes you need to make to your exit criteria for Discovery and Demo, the next step is to implement them.
I’ve found that the most effective way to roll out changes like these is to sit down with each rep and walk them through the data and insights in a 1:1 setting. It shows why the changes are important, how they are going to make the rep more successful and signals that you are investing in their career development, which is always a great motivator for salespeople.
I then like to create a cheat sheet for salespeople to use on calls, outlining the exit criteria for each stage and examples of discovery questions that they can ask to get the information out of the buyer. It makes it less intimidating to start adopting the changes.
I also encourage sales leaders and reps to review call recordings on a regular basis to check that they are asking the right questions and establishing the right criteria before moving deals forward. With the cheat sheet in hand as a reference guide, call reviews become less subjective and more about identifying specific things to improve on.
And finally I always recommend sales leaders re-run the this analysis on a periodic basis to see how the metrics have moved as a result of the changes and coaching.
If you need help getting your entire sales team to perform like your superstars, I want to work with you! Get in touch with me by replying to this email or sending me a DM through LinkedIn.