TouchCare’s sales team recently expanded. It was at this point COO, Juliet Frerking knew it was time to bring in a system of KPIs to support the team’s growth and set them up for success.
But how would she decide which KPIs to track, and which metrics to ignore?
Figuring out which sales metrics to track
Of course, there are countless sales metrics one could track. But what Juliet and her team were trying to figure out was which of these metrics actually contribute toward success.
That’s when Juliet decided to use Geckoboard to set up a sales dashboard for her team. Even though she didn’t yet feel she had pinned down her team’s KPIs, she knew that by making general sales metrics more visible in the team, she would help them zone in on the metrics that do matter.
In some ways, building the dashboard first is putting the cart before the horse. I doubt I already have the three magic metrics on the dashboard; they’ll need to be tweaked so it’s something that’s constantly changing. It’s a different approach for the sales team, but it gives them complete visibility on the process we’re going through, as well as motivating them to perform well.
Since implementing the dashboard, they’ve started to notice trends in their data — including which metrics correlate with success and which don’t. For example, they noticed one of their top performers still achieves great sales, even though some of their new lead numbers aren’t as high as others.
Right now we’re trying to work out – what makes a good sales person? What makes someone efficient? We’re tracking things like calls and meetings to see what’s needed to hit goals. We have some people on the team doing really well so we’re using them as a kind of benchmark.
Building a data-led team culture
With a growing team, Juliet says it’s important that TouchCare is able to offer the right training and support to enable everyone to do their best. The dashboard helps with this too, by identifying performance areas where training might be needed.
Anytime you introduce metrics, there’s always a fear that people feel uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, I only care how much they’re selling. We’re sharing metrics on a dashboard because we want to know what will set people up for success.
The root question is “are we powering the team up in the right way?”. We want to know we’re setting them up properly and that it’s not an impossible job.
With their KPIs settled, Juliet plans to use their dashboard as the “backbone” of their weekly sales meetings – bringing structure to their conversations. As well as being a tool which, at a glance, will tell them how they are performing and if they’re on track for success.
Juliet Frerking has been the COO at TouchCare for over 6 years. TouchCare is a healthcare concierge service for employees based in the US.
