By: Matt Tyre, Director, Client Services

Recently I was asked by a customer 'how many of my sales people should hit target?' The easy - although unrealistic - answer to this question would be 100%. However, many factors contribute top the success of a sales team, thus making an exact number harder to predict.

An organization could ultimately be setting targets too high and that could be the culture in their industry or company. When you have this culture, companies tend to set stretch targets and the mindset of sales people is that they desperately need to push to meet individual targets for their team to hit their numbers. Sales people in this environment typically do not have visibility or full transparency to performance targets and actual performance. The sales people are pushing to meet whatever goal is communicated by management and these figures move around. This is what we call working in a black box. In this scenario you will almost certainly see underachievers. Communication from sales management is that they will compare peer-to-peer performance versus defined metrics not against their personal targets.

In other cultures, if the plan is designed with reasonable goals that don't fluctuate up and down, with traceable results, then 60%-70% of your sales people should be on target with the plan.

Not all employees and new hires will have the competencies to be successful, and consideration should be made to focus efforts on the hiring process. Companies that invest in this process, and scrutinize recruits beforehand with online competency tests are increase their chances for having a successful sales team by weaning out those candidates that may be a wrong fit within the organization.

Training your sales people to improve sales performance and opportunity is another element that will contribute to better overall performance. The constant reminder of a winning process can never be a waste of time. Frequent meetings to talk about wins and how successful sales people achieved wins can help other sales people follow in this process.

Lastly, mentoring top sales people can help contribute to the overall team success. Deploying the top performers to work with employees in the bottom 30%-40% will only help the entire sales team. The saying 'You're only as strong as your weakest link' may be cliche, but definitely applies in the context of the success of a sales organization.

If your sales people are not achieving results in the 60%-70% range, then they should be put on a development plan to improve their performance, or ultimately be replaced in the organization. Often, the mindset of the sales person that is underachieving is that they would want to move on as well if there is no mutual reward for the individual and the company.

Achieving this mark is important for an organization. If the sales force is motivated, successful and meeting objectives than you will see a positive work environment. If this is not the case, you will find the reverse effect.