Finance and Business

Sales Rep Peformance Appraisals

Sales reps in the 1990s are becoming more professional, more service-oriented toward customers, and more self-managed. Many are specialists, better-trained and more targeted. As such they expect to be appraised on their performance in objective, professional, and constructive ways. And they expect to be active “partners” in this appraisal process -involved in rating themselves and providing their opinions on where they need to improve, alongside those of the manager.  After all, sales people are very much like professional contractors: They work for the customer.

The reps take feedback from customers about what is satisfying their needs and then adapt sales solutions accordingly. The manager becomes less of an “authority” figure than the person working alongside the rep to help him or her develop and do the very best possible job to keep customers happy.

Many formal appraisals rate reps on a series of proficiencies, both quantitative and qualitative. These include skills in such areas as time management, paperwork handling, customer relations, expense control, holding onto customers and avoiding customer turnober, growing new account, and hitting salse forecasts.

These “laundry list” type appraisals fall down on two counts. First, they assume that reps with all of these well-rounded skills will succeed, which is not always the case in an age of narrower rep specialization. And second, they don`t tie ratings specifically enough back to the manager`s stated goals. Rep proficiency levels are only relevant if the are goal-directed.

For instance, if a sales manager`s goals are to grow sales to new accounts, the proficiencies necessary to produce this result among reps differ markedly from those necessary to hold onto and grow sales via “old line” existing accounts. Each goal requires different kinds of training and daily call effort. Each would emphasize different field-level spending priorities in expense budgets. And each requires different skills in sales technique and paperwork handling.