Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

Increase sales by conducting an effective Telesales Employee Performance Appraisal

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Periodically conducting an employee performance appraisal and overall performance reviews are essential to judging the effectiveness of individual inside sales reps. Discussions on this topic with managers when we're conducting our telesales training classes are frequent.  Your reps do need to know what your criteria are, and also need to know that they're fairly and evenly applied to everyone. If you're a manager that already has codified a performance appraisal and review process, read on, to ensure your criteria are valid and measurable, and based on observation, not opinion. If you're a manager that doesn't yet conduct appraisals and reviews, read ahead for a few ideas to get you started. And if you're a telesales rep, read on to ensure that your performance reviews are fair, valid, and are designed to help you to meet sales quota.

As a manager, when compiling behaviors for your performance review, keep in mind that these factors must be both measurable and observable.  Observations are the opposite of opinions. Every manager has opinions, but to be statistically valid, they must be backed up by measurable observations and behaviors that can be documented. By "observable", it means that you, not someone else, has witnessed the behaviors.

The ideal performance review should be based on the most important, measurable  factors that lead to success. For measurement, keep it simple. You might consider using a three-point scale detailing whether the rep exceeded, met, or didn't meet the objectives.  A larger scale, say 10 points, often opens the review to subjectivity, and the review must be objective. The argument can be made that one could, in fact quantify 10 success points for each performance factor, but does anyone really have enough time in the day to compile these?

How often should you give your reps a performance review? At least once a month. A good time to do it is when you hand each of them their monthly commission checks.  Do it in a series of one-on-one meetings. For individuals that are not meeting expectations, you may want to consider a weekly performance review to get their skillsets up to speed faster.

If you haven't yet listed your performance review elements, it's not a bad idea to generate your own list, then run it by your reps to ensure they're in agreement. They may have valid points, or give you ideas on other behaviors that you hadn't thought of. But do keep your reps on track, and reaffirm to them that the behaviors must be observable and measurable. And bear in mind that for every item on your list, your reps will, in their own performance reviews with you, expect you to provide a concrete example of how they exceeded, met, or underachieved, still another reason to underscore the importance that the behaviors be both observable and measurable.

To begin your list, try to break down the behaviors you want to track in three general areas:

• Job responsibilities
• Performance objectives needed to meet quota
• Performance objectives in support of team and company goals

Now let's review the points model:

• Level 3: Exceeded expectations
• Level 2: Met expectations
• Level 1: Did not meet expectations

Ready to start? Here are a few measurable behaviors that you may want to consider putting on your list, as well as some that are non-measurable that you'll want to stay away from. These lists are incomplete, and you'll certainly want to customize your own:

Factors that are measurable:

Job responsibilities

• Meets monthly quota
• Works business hours relating to territory (exceeds expectations when work hours occasionally extend to longer-than-8 hour days)
• Adheres to company-specified dress requirements (if work dress is specified as "business casual," a rep may exceed expectations by habitually wearing a suit, for example)

Performance objectives needed to meet quota

• Talked to at least one high-level executive at each of his or her 20 key accounts, and logged at least two sentences describing the conversation in the CRM to prove it
• Profiled the decision process from CXO through Managers, for each line of business within 3 corporate entities, and can produce that data in written form

Performance objectives in support of team and company goals

• Presents solutions when presenting problems (exceeds expectations when the proposed solution is implemented)
• Enthusiastically supports internal initiatives from his or her Sales Management team (exceeds expectations when observed advocating the initiatives to other colleagues on the sales team)
• Has a strong sense of business ethics (exceeds expectations when a good ethical decision may potentially, or did, result in personal loss)
• Willingness to help others on the team (exceeds expectations when observed volunteering to help another rep)

Here are some behaviors that are not measurable:

• Personality traits, including friendliness, sociability in the workplace, fashion sense (but see company-specified dress, above)
• Having a good relationship with other team members (hear me out on this: we know of one case where an ethical sales rep refused to join in on after-work bar gossip regarding other individuals in the company, and was ostracized himself for not participating in these "slam sessions." Individuals that pride themselves on "taking the high road" will often be perceived by less-ethical employees as being "aloof.")
• Communications styles: having a "friendly phone manner" is not measureable, because it's too subjective. (But "Uses first names on every call," on the other hand, can be measured.)

Additional tip on determining measurable performance objectives:

A great way to define measurable performance objectives it to visit with your reps side-by-side, in their workspaces, so you can see how they work and define aspects of performance that can be measured. This is an element that we cover in our inside sales coaching classes for managers, incidentally. Among these observable behaviors could be:

• Investigates CRM for same company contacts prior to making initial call to a new prospect
• Investigates company website prior to making initial call to a new prospect
• Takes no more than 3 minutes to investigate company website

The final word on criteria for Performance Measurement is this: every company has a slightly different sales performance situation, depending on what the reps were trained on, and how.  This is why you can --- and should --- determine your own. Add establishing a measurable, observable Performance Review process to your Best Management playbook.