Knowing how to measure sales effectiveness can greatly improve management of a sales team. If you don’t know what the individuals are doing well and where the areas for improvement are needed, you will not have the information you need to make the minor adjustments that will help you to increase your sales. Here are six areas to look at when measuring sales effectiveness.

1. Sales Revenue

Let’s get the obvious point out of the way and that is to use sales revenue to measure results. This one really does not need to be mentioned as every sales manager is currently using this metric to measure performance. But what is important to mention with this is that many sales leaders only look at this metric when managing a sales team and that is where the problem lies.

There are many other variables at play and when a manager only rewards and reprimands based on the sales revenue results, there could be negative impacts in the areas of turnover and employee development. And when turnover is high and employees are not growing, long-term sales revenue will not be maximized.

2. Activity Levels

Once we get beyond revenue, we can look at activity levels when figuring out how to measure sales effectiveness. There is definitely a sales funnel at play where the number of cold calls leads to a number of appointments which leads to the level of lead generation.

By using some sort of system to monitor and track activity levels in terms of calls made, appointments set and completed, and leads produced will provide very valuable data that should be factored in when measuring sales performance.

3. Hours Worked

A key thing to look at is how much is the sales resource working. Many sales positions have certain amount of freedom from a lack of fixed hours and schedule. Is the sales resource taking advantage of the freedom or putting in the right amount of hours per week.

Of course if sales resource is performing well, a manager might not care how much time is being put in. But if performance could be better, this is an area that could explain what is going and also an area that is fairly easy to adjust.

4. Productivity

If you divide the activity by the hours worked, you get a metric of productivity. This is a very important how to measure sales effectiveness metric to look at as it can tell you if the resource is efficient and working hard.

If the activity levels are high, but it takes a ton of hours to get there, there may be something to look in terms of what the employee is doing.

5. Sales Messaging

Looking at how hard and how much the sales resource is working is not enough. We also need to measure and monitor what they are doing while they are working in terms of sales messaging.

Are they saying the right points and asking the right questions when they are talking with prospects? Working extremely hard with the wrong messaging will not yield the best results.

6. Tactics and Techniques

The last thing to look at with how to measure sales effectiveness is to identify if the sales resource is using the right tactics and techniques. If you have provided sales training, is the resource utilizing the tactics and techniques they have been trained on?

You’re not alone, because the fact is the often info-laden seminars that are constructed for the benefit of employees and those in the business are void of any sales jokes. Why are jokes about sales so important to include? Because they involve the audience at another level of interaction, they create a comfortable environment and successfully engage the audience in its totality. Sales jokes, especially sales training jokes are crucial to presentations and seminars – especially if you are the one conducting the session.

The responsibility is immense, employee satisfaction and general morale comes down to the office environment and the content of their job and duties. The work experience they encounter will be one of amusement and inspiration. Building energy in the room can be difficult; however sales jokes can alleviate the dullness and arduousness of the situation by creating a warmer and more welcoming atmosphere. One of the most important issues to address is ‘questions’.

For those new and lacking in knowledge about the sales industry, questions are critical to their understanding and help in building work relationships with other employees and seniors. As such sales jokes allows for a more relaxed environment where they feel comfortable and at ease to ask questions that will indubitably increase their performance within the office and increase profitability and profile for the business.

There really is nothing worse than sitting through an important sales meeting and finding it hard to stay awake and stay involved. Jokes about sales can make the difference! It offers humour and fun in a business environment. Adult sales jokes can be a risk and before using these in a sales meeting or presentation session make sure you know your audience well. It is inappropriate to use adult sales jokes or sexist jokes in mixed audience situation.

In today’s politically correct society and particularly in the work environment, or in any public presentation there can be severe repercussions if adult sales jokes cause offense to your staff or audience. The reality is that not everyone has the same sense of humour and causing offense will immediately disengage the audience or cause emotional stress in individual staff members. Jokes on sales should be fairly generic and funny! They should also be shared amongst all staff rather than creating a sense of isolation in one or more of the company’s departments.

If all staff are included in shared jokes you will find that the overall team spirit within the organization as well as productivity will increase. Without a shared team spirit, staff members often work alone and at their own pace as there is little desire of supporting fellow team mates in achieving their sales goals and targets. Therefore introducing humour through sales meeting jokes will improve the company turn over.