Here's how you can continuously track and evaluate the performance of outside sales representatives.

From my experience, it is useless to throw all kind of metrics at sales people, and with that paralyse the team with analysis nonsense. You have to ask yourself what the accomplishment is that you are looking for, and measure them on that. Revenue? Fine. Pipeline growth? Maybe. Or #deals in the pipeline? Average deal size? Number of trading customers? Maybe not. Because people respond to your metric and flock where the spotlight is shining. Which may be a giant distraction. It is better to hire professionals and stay out of their way.

Setting measurable targets is definitely a strong element. However, it is important that targets or the measurement criteria tangibly represents Sales Team's performance. Sometimes corporate targets are more business result oriented but they may not be the optimal vehicle for Sales Reps' performance.

Absolutely, 100%. Using CRM to record and track Sales activities - emails, phoncalls, meetings etc. - conducted by Slaes teams is an important aspect. Unfortunately, CRM has a lot PTAD associated with it and one has to explore latest and greatest technologies that lower the barrier to entry. Such as outlook or team integration that will automatically detect whether activity is related or can be logged into CRM from the daily productivity tool interface. Once there is culture to log all sales activities, it provides valuable information not only to track Sales efforts but also correlate with sales success.

A good CRM is great, as long as it has been road-tested by Sales and has not turned into a giant Marketing Stats driven monster. Or an over-the-counter Salesforce implementation with all kind of useless fields. Ask yourself: "What do I want to get out of this thing?" And then realise it is time to remove anything useless.

I have to disagree with this one. Study human behaviour and you will learn: "number of sales calls made" --> leads to useless calls "conversion rates" --> leads to sales people only putting deals in the CRM that they are about to close "customer retention rates" --> sales reps will focus on customers that are easy to retain and drop the rest, which will lead to a very weak top-of-the-funnel. If you are after revenue, target the salesforce on revenue, from the vertical/channel/geography you want that from.

Data driven insights and KPI monitoring can be a great vehicle for gauging Sales performance. But one needs to set some clear definition and set metrics, to avoid analysis paralysis. Metrics about deals per sales rep, Sales Cycle in different sales stages, deal value vs deal quantity, progress towards quota are different levers to devise sales teams performance measuring metrics.

Probably the most important, in my opinion. Sales Manager's ability to motivate and drive teams using all of the above mentioned items is the main catalyst to accelerate sales performance. By definition that would mean the Sales Manager needs to be knowledgeable, proficient in metrics, insights, CRM and other aspects mentioned earlier. It will also aid set in the right size and skillets in the sales team. Sales Manager needs to change hats from Manager to Coach to Mentor to be most effective when providing feedback. Are Sales Managers proficient in these areas?

Feedback is great, as long as it is feedback about the right metrics. The key task of an outside sales rep is to build relations and grow their territory. If you would micromanage them with all kind of futile metrics, you will have the opposite effect. There are really two scenarios here: you either deal with a proactive professional, whom you can have an equal-footed conversation with; or you are dealing with a junior whom you have to joystick-coach. Now imagine what works better and what scales eventually.

I can't stress enough how easy the life of a traveling sales person has become with LinkedIn, L-Sales Navigator and the Salesforce app. Being able to really use these tools, and learn social selling techniques, is the killer skill for the feature.