Performance Requirements for Internet Sales Professionals

[ChrisB]

I was wondering what, if any, you all are using to gauge the performance of your teams? Do you use something like:


Performance Requirements and Benchmarks

• Unit Sales: ___ Units/Month Minimum Requirement (3 month rolling average)
• Unit Sales: ___ Units/Month or more is the Benchmark for ISS’s
• Outbound Calls: ___ Calls/Day Minimum Requirement (5 day average)
• Outbound Calls: ___ % of Working Leads/Day is Benchmark for ISS’s
• Lead to Showroom Conversion: ___ % Minimum Requirement (monthly average)
• Lead to Showroom Conversion: ___ % or more is the Benchmark for ISS’s
• Closing Ratio on Shows: ___ % is the Minimum Requirement (monthly average)
• Closing Ratio on Shows: ___ % or more is the Benchmark for ISS’s


This shows the minimum amounts needed to keep the job and then what they need to achieve to get any bonuses above commissions.

Thoughts?

 

[Alex Snyder]

Who is your team? Sales agents, sales managers, stores, BDC, Internet Managers, etc?

 

[ChrisB]

Opps, I guess that would help. This is for a BDC/Internet Sales Department.

 

[Jerry Thibeau]

Yes this is good, but yours is too much. I would pick four things and make them a focus. Each month you can throw in a fifth flavor of the month. Things like CSI, average gross, most people logged and e-mail penetration.

Your 5 calls per day is not enough, sales people should be making 20 per day minimum.

The only problem with tracking conversions is that you'll have people not logging customers in the CRM in order to keep their conversion rates high.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Curious to what you are considering a "lead to showroom conversion"?

Are you referring to appointment to show, appointment to sold, or actual "lead to show". All 3 of these are different measurements. I track the 1st two but I also track our "Lead to Show". From a marketing and process level, we work many leads out of our bdc where the customer never responds to a lead, nor are we able to get them on the phone. This doesn't mean we haven't performed to the level we needed to in order to get the customer through the front door. No correspondence, no appointment, but a lead to show.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Opps, I guess that would help. This is for a BDC/Internet Sales Department.

There are two kinds of Internet Departments:

1. Cradle to Grave Sales People who handle Internet Leads
2. Appointment setters who simply prime the customer to visit

I don't know what kind of department you're breeding, but the payplan should vary for each one. I'll start with the second because it is more of a departure from the traditional: It is all about the outbound calls. If you focus them on the number of outbound calls with appointments (hopefully confirmed by a manager) secondly then you'll drive more sales.

In the first type of department your people should be paid a lot like sales agents with bigger bonuses. A cradle to grave setup is how the Internet should really be treated, but our sales agents and sales managers are still too far away from grasping modernity yet. This scenario is also good if you have very low volume (or don't know where you're going to be). Now, let's talk about what Jerry said:

Your 5 calls per day is not enough, sales people should be making 20 per day minimum.

Sales agents and cradle to grave Internet people should also be concentrating on outbound phone calls. If I were to step back into a store I would pay my people on three tiers:

1. Number of phone calls made & received in a month (drives quantity/volume)
2. Percentage of appointments created off of those calls and the show rate of those appointments (drives quality phone calls)
3. Commission on gross created by sales (incentive to drive profit)

That would be my base payplan with bonuses being the "X" factor. Bonuses can cover anything: CRM utilization, CSI averages, volume, used car numbers, overage inventory movement, warranty sales, etc.

To get back to what Jerry said, 20 phone calls per day out of a sales agent is ideal. It is really tough to get that accomplished without altering the pay and the mindset. You also need to make sure your CRM architect is designing calls tasks, in your CRM, that make sense.