If you’ve spent any time working in sales, you’ll no doubt have heard, “What gets measured gets done” (variously attributed to W. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker, and Rheticus).

Having worked with plenty of sales organizations in 2019 to tighten up their sales process and approach – whether identifying the lag and lead measures that will result in individual quota attainment and the sales leader's number – two things consistently surprised me:

how many sales teams leave these to chance once they are identified
how many DON'T have an internal discipline of WHEN the activities, that will achieve these measures, need to be actioned or executed

Those who have been through my Executive Access prospecting workshop will know that I say, “Prospecting is a team sport” – that is one where all salespeople/SDRs take part in the activity at the same time.

And, the top performers in sales organizations that aren’t all that effective do the same – they create their own discipline when they aren’t provided with any structure.

They schedule their activities very intentionally.

It was Rich Mesch, VP of Customer Engagement and Performance at Performance Development Group (experts at building sales onboarding and leadership programs), who first made me think about this topic of measurement and scheduling more deeply. Rich thought that saying “what gets scheduled gets done” was more effective at driving improved performance than measurement. After all, what’s the point of measurement if people aren’t doing the activity (Rich, apologies if I have butchered or misremembered the context of the conversation). A quick search on the web also returns others who have said the same.

This got me thinking - and in the spirit of abundance vs. either/or thinking, I’d like to posit the following:

What gets measured AND scheduled gets done.

So, if you’re looking to take sales performance as an individual or team to the next level in 2020, get clarity on the following:

The lag indicator you want to achieve – and the lead indicators that will attain the lag (influenceable and predictable; Chris McChesney, Jim Huling)
When will you action or do the lead activities during the day or week that will achieve the lag indicator (individual quota, team number) - schedule that time in your calendar

This has been my experience, what are your thoughts?

And, if your sales team has been struggling with these issues for more than 30 days, it’s time to get outside help. Give me a call.