Guiding, encouraging and coaching your sales team and all the individuals within it is your job as a sales manager or commercial manager, right? Salespeople are generally independent types who have a strong sense of responsibility, but as with all other positions, salespeople also need to assessed to become. And that can be quite difficult...how do you deal with it?

Is performance difficult to estimate?

Assessing your salespeople can be quite a challenge. They are usually on the road alone, so checking is not always possible. Moreover, selling is not a hard science and is therefore very subjective. If sales manager you have a very busy job, so it often does not fit into your schedule to closely monitor all your salespeople. Other frequently mentioned arguments for poor assessment of salespeople include 'the results are good, I have no reason to complain' or 'we hear no complaints from our customers and leads'.

We believe that we can ditch many of the traditional ways of assessing sellers. For example, we do not believe in using targets in terms of the number of conversations. You then emphasize quantity and that cannot be the intention. It is also not always fair to judge salespeople on their actual sales targets. No matter how good your salesperson is, if your company's product/service is not popular or the economy is bad, there is no saving it.

But how do you assess and monitor your salespeople? I think we agree that lengthy conversation reports are not a solution. Especially because no one enjoys writing or reading them. However, we believe that it is certainly possible to properly monitor and assess your sellers.

3 ways to rate your seller

One of the most obvious and highly valuable ways to assess is to engage with your sellers. So get on the road! This is of course not possible during every conversation, but it can be done on a random basis. This is one of the most powerful ways to actually experience how your salesperson behaves during conversations. After all, we all know that the difference between a top salesperson and a barely successful salesperson is determined by details. There's no better way to track down those details than by joining in on conversations.

When assessing your sellers, dare to think out of the box and use resources that you have not thought of until now. For example, I know from experience that a sales team can benefit enormously from being organized informal communication between themselves. In short: create a WhatsApp group for your sales team, or use an internal social media tool such as Yammer. Within such a group where salespeople report their conversations and progress, you quickly discover how your salesperson is feeling and what the bottlenecks are.

Finally, a third is a very effective method, which is unfortunately not often used. Ask your customer or lead! Take the plunge and periodically call your customers and ask if they are satisfied with their account manager or salesperson. Ask if there are any areas for improvement, if communication is good, etc.

Strengthen the grip with the office

In addition to monitoring and assessing your sales team, it is also crucial to keep a handle on the link between the salespeople on the road and the commercial department in the office. Prejudices often arise here. "Those salespeople just drive around, they don't do anything!" is a frequently heard criticism from office staff. An understandable reaction, because they often have no idea what the seller is doing. My favorite solution: organize a commercial update once a week, where the salespeople, through a so-called 'stand up' of, for example, 10 minutes, present which sales processes they are working on. Next to a huge team strengthening effect, it is also a way for you as a manager to assess whether the salesperson is doing well.