Taking your sales team from zero to hero is a roller-coaster journey for a sales manager, fraught with difficulties, challenges and opportunities. Yeah! Its not an easy task to accomplish sales targets consistently, week after week, month after month. No matter how much energy and enthusiasm a sales manager brings to the table to school and nurture his sales force, results don’t always hit the sweet spot.

One must remember that growth doesn’t happen always in a straight line and there are peaks and valleys in every company’s sales graph. Many sales teams pitch for growth and increase in efficiency in same tandem. However, everything boils down to the sales training that is received by the sales employees from time to time.

It is the job of the sales manager to furnish the sales team with adequate tools, know their strengths and weaknesses of every sales employee and devise personalized strategies so that they can hit the desired mark successfully.

With that said and done, it is also necessary to measure and track the ongoing performance of the sales team to get an indication whether they are performing optimally, and your training is paying rich dividends. For this, a sales manager needs to have a clear visibility and at the same time devise strategies on how to monitor a sales team effectively.

Measuring the effectiveness of a sales training

1. Monitoring phone skills and call quality: Sales reps spend a sizeable amount of time on phone calls to nurture leads and convert them into customers. The efficiency of a sales rep depends on the amount of time spent selling, lead response time and ability to work on numerous accounts. Though measuring the number of calls and average spent on each call is not the accurate measure for evaluating effectiveness, it tells a bit of story. However, the quality of phone calls with prospects can give a clear idea of how well the training has been successful. Recording calls can also clearly explain how well a sales rep builds a rapport with a prospect.
2. Tracking customers’ response value: For a sales manager, churning out maximum revenue for the company is the ultimate goal. To achieve this, sales reps are trained in a way that they can convince their customers on how valuable the company can be for their business. However, tracking the high-value customers over a period of time can be an indication whether customers trust your sales reps and still find value in your company.
3. Team work ethics: Teamwork makes the dream work, they say. However, since people have different personality traits, they can respond to training programs differently. A clash of attitudes can take place within a sales team which can hamper sales performance. Sales managers need to focus on whether sales reps are working in harmony and whether any situation or event has any impact on their performance. If there is any absence in work ethic, then that’s a sign that training processes need to be rebuilt.
4. Examine forecasting accuracy: The ability of making accurate forecasts by sales reps can be attributed to an effective inside sales training. Forecasts can reveal the competencies of sales reps and help a sales manager understand their abilities to the hilt. Accurate sales forecasting indicates that sales reps know their prospects well, understand their needs well and can provide them long-term value.