Understanding the Power of Top Performer Analysis

The Need for Identifying Key Attributes of Top Performers

In a poll of sales leaders and enablement professionals, we asked “Do you know what attributes set your top performers apart from the rest?”. A staggering 45% had no defined or visible insight into this.

Further, a B2B Sales Benchmarks Report released by Pavilion and Ebsta concludes, “In 2023, we’ll all be expected to achieve more with less. For this to happen, we have to start with a better understanding of what is driving our success.”

Key Metrics for Identifying Top Performers

The B3B Sales Benchmarks Report helpfully identifies the 4 key areas that are likely to impact win rates and reduce sales cycles:

• Strength of Customer Relationships
• Sales Engagement Activities
• Sales Qualification Effectiveness
• Efficient Time Management

While these measures are useful, they ignore one of any sales organization's most valuable resources for identifying the competencies that drive success, the behaviors of top performers. It sounds so simple but as Felix Kruger recently commented it is “Hardly talked about and almost never conducted.”

How to Profile Top Performers

It sounds so obvious when you think about it - after all, many sales leaders have wondered how simple life would be if they could just clone their top performers - well this really is the next best thing! But the fact that 28% of the respondents to our poll said that they “had an idea but it was based on ‘gut fee'l” suggests that not having the right metrics or data in place could be what is holding people back.

Use a Competency Framework

Puttling a sales competency framework at the heart of your enablement strategy supported by consistent measurement is the key to making this possible. Take a look at the example dashboard below for an example that maps competencies against closed revenue. It clearly identifies the positive attributes shared by the top performers in the top right quadrant and suggests the skills gaps shared by those in the bottom left quadrant that you might want to focus on.

Connect Performance Data to Behaviors

Leaders must find ways to bridge the disconnect between Enablement activity and Sales Performance. More often than not, Revenue Leaders won’t be able to connect their revenue goals with the attributes needed in their sales team to achieve them. Similarly, Enablement will not have visibility of the impact of their activity on revenue attainment - this disconnect is simply not good enough anymore!

Insight like this gives you the ability to align enablement with revenue goals and plan activity focused on the areas that you know are impacting performance. And in a world of doing more with less, this could be one of the biggest ways to impact performance.