Podcast episode
How to Fully Measure Your Sales Reps | Eleanor Dorfman | 30MPC Hall of Fame
30 Minutes to President's Club14 Apr 202539 min
Description
ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS: SPFs for Short-Term Change: Use SPFs to drive short-term behavior changes. Long-term shifts should align with consistent metrics in your "iron square" framework. Strict Holdover Rules: Allow one quarter for closing open opportunities after a territory change if they’re past stage two. No exceptions ensure fairness and consistency. The Iron Square: Track rep productivity with win rate, AE-sourced pipeline, total pipeline generation, and forecast accuracy, with quota attainment as the central North Star. Customer-First Processes: Avoid letting internal rules disrupt customer experience. Build buffer zones in ROEs and territories to minimize deal handoffs. ELEANOR'S PATH TO PRESIDENTS CLUB: Head of Sales @ Retool Global Head of Commercial Retention & Regional Director of Commercial Sales @ Segment Global Head of Commercial Renewals and Retention @ Segment Head of Customer Success and Solutions engineering @ Clever Inc RESOURCES DISCUSSED: Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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These reps will work 100 to a thousand. These reps will work 1000 plus. Those will change year over year, again, as your business moves up market and expands. So that's one. Again, as you move internationally, suddenly it's going to be, okay, where is this headquartered? And then there's complexities around if it's headquartered here, but everyone's over here, but the buying note is over here. “You have to have an objective way to set that.” So I think the two most important ones are segment lines. And then what are you going to use as your objective criteria for who can work it and where it is? I think it's shipping HQ and Salesforce. If it's different in LinkedIn, if it's different on their S1, if it's different on Wikipedia, we don't care. Even if it's inaccurate, it has to be consistent or else people are going to spend all of their
but the buying note is over here. You have to have an objective way to set that. So I think the two most important ones are segment lines. And then what are you going to use as your objective criteria for who can work it and where it is? I think it's shipping HQ and Salesforce. If it's different in LinkedIn, if it's different on their S1, if it's different on Wikipedia, we don't care. “Even if it's inaccurate, it has to be consistent or else people are going to spend all of their” time putting together a presentation on why it should move into a different territory. Shipping HQ, LinkedIn, you use that every time. You know it's not going to be accurate all the time, but it's going to be the same. You're focused on consistency more than accuracy 100% of the time. You'd rather be consistent 100% of the time than accurate 100% of the time.
we don't care. Even if it's inaccurate, it has to be consistent or else people are going to spend all of their time putting together a presentation on why it should move into a different territory. Shipping HQ, LinkedIn, you use that every time. You know it's not going to be accurate all the time, but it's going to be the same. “You're focused on consistency more than accuracy 100% of the time.” You'd rather be consistent 100% of the time than accurate 100% of the time. How often are you revisiting these data refreshes? Is it annually? Quarterly? Otherwise? Data's refreshed. It depends where your sources are. But I think we try and keep the data refreshed constantly. And it matters at the moment of time. So when the demo is request, what does the data say on that day?
You know it's not going to be accurate all the time, but it's going to be the same. You're focused on consistency more than accuracy 100% of the time. You'd rather be consistent 100% of the time than accurate 100% of the time. How often are you revisiting these data refreshes? Is it annually? Quarterly? Otherwise? Data's refreshed. It depends where your sources are. “But I think we try and keep the data refreshed constantly.” And it matters at the moment of time. So when the demo is request, what does the data say on that day? So you have to say on this day, this is the source of the data, but you always keep your data up to date. So this would drive me crazy, extremely triggering. When I was at Carta, the way that we would price
demotivating. And so if the goal is to keep everyone motivated, it needs to be fair. You need to do what you say you're going to do, and it needs to be consistent. Could you give an example rule for how you would draw segment lines? And if you find that the actual pricing metric is really different from the segment lines, like what's the rule around that? “For us, the examples are it's whatever it is when you get the deal and when you qualify it. And so” if it's a zero to 100 employees and it's 99 employees, when it comes inbound, it goes to stage two, you're working it, it stays with you even if they grow to 200 or 300 employees during the course of the deal. Once it's close lost, and again, this is where you have to have accountability and the manager making sure it's real and you're not just holding on to it.
Or I had attorney count when I was selling to law firms. It was based on the number of attorneys. And there were lots of different variables in there. So I think it would be good for folks just to hear how you two chose to draw those lines in your leadership positions. Mine has always been employee count. And then that can change because you might resegment year “over year. And then you figure out holdovers and how to manage that. I've done GOs internationally.” We've done some GOs domestically. I find GOs are more relevant internationally than they are in the US, especially with the way people buy today. And then we used to do full...
Even for our commercial reps, we were able to carve out books where we got most of the TAM covered, and that was your book for the year. And then there was a pool of accounts that were named and stamped commercial, where mid-market reps literally could not pick them up. And same thing with enterprise. “And then we would continuously refresh the data, but we wouldn't continuously re-stamp” the accounts so you didn't have this constant moving across segments. It wasn't perfect, but my goal was so that when we carve territories with a plan, if a company grew by 30 employees over two quarters, to me, there's not such a radical difference that you should take that from one rep and put it in another rep's hands. How did the two of you approach holdover period?
TAM covered, and that was your book for the year. And then there was a pool of accounts that were named and stamped commercial, where mid-market reps literally could not pick them up. And same thing with enterprise. And then we would continuously refresh the data, but we wouldn't continuously re-stamp the accounts so you didn't have this constant moving across segments. “It wasn't perfect, but my goal was so that when we carve territories with a plan, if” a company grew by 30 employees over two quarters, to me, there's not such a radical difference that you should take that from one rep and put it in another rep's hands. How did the two of you approach holdover period? So the year ends, I now have a new book. Territories are changing, but I've got a really big deal. I've worked for a long time. It's just on the cusp.
And then in the center, you have the north star, which is quota attainment. And then lastly, number four, your internal nonsensical processes should not impact the customer experience. “If you have a segment line that is off by one employee, make sure that there's enough buffer built into your territories and your ROEs so you're not constantly passing deals and making your customers feel the exchange of reps deals between different hands.” Alrighty, Nick, how can people help us out? So a lot of what Eleanor talks about in her ROEs is stage based. And we sat down with Mark Cosiglo and we documented his five step sales process and the different stages that go into this.