Salesforce.com has always promoted a healthy lifestyle for their employees. From fresh snacks in our kitchens to a generous monthly wellness allowance and corporate Keas challenges, healthy living is very much a part of our #dreamjob culture. And we are not alone. According to the latest Workplace Wellness Programs Study (sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Department of Health & Human Services) about half of U.S. employers with 50 or more employees invest in employee wellness programs.

The idea behind the investment in these programs is quite simple: a healthy employee is a more productive employee. Measuring the ROI of these programs however, is quite complex. Is investing in an employee’s gym membership and providing fresh fruit in the office really making them more productive? It’s hard to say.

One fitness trend that has recently taken salesforce.com by storm is wearable fitness trackers. Products such as FitBit, Jawbone UP and Nike FuelBand allow users to track metrics such as number of steps taken, calories burned, and even sleep patterns. Which got me to thinking… what if we could leverage all this great new data we are receiving from these fitness trackers and integrate them with more traditional performance metrics in Salesforce?

Let’s take a look at some ways we could integrate this data to effectively measure and quantify the ROI of a healthy salesperson.

Sales Performance Metrics

As an example, are some traditional sales metrics customers commonly track in Salesforce dashboards: pipeline, activity and closed sales. 

Does a salesperson that is more active throughout the day really close more deals (e.g. number of steps vs total pipeline)? How does a good nights sleep impact the number of quality customer engagements they have each week? And how many of those engagements turned into opportunities and closed sales (e.g. hours slept vs number meetings with key decision makers)?  By combining these data points, we could potentially find out if a healthy lifestyle really is making an impact to our bottom line.

Sales Team Challenges

Traditional sales metrics aren’t the only way to enrich performance data. At salesforce.com, it is engrained in our sales methodology that we win as a team, not as individuals. Being able to measure the ROI of not just a healthy salesperson, but the combined sales team, could provide very interesting insights into what the right formula is for a top revenue-generating team. 

Salespeople are competitive by nature. And with new corporate wellness platforms such as Keas bringing health-driven competition to the workplace, there is a natural alignment to how these can be better leveraged within an intrinsically competitive group such as sales. The intention of these programs is to increase employee engagement to drive more productivity, but can we prove these programs are improving team sales as well?

With a partnership in place with FitBit to integrate fitness data into Keas (partnerships with Nike and Jawbone are in the works), measuring the ROI of a healthy sales team is a very real prospect.

Individual Health Performance

With the costs of healthcare continuing to skyrocket, both employers and insurance providers are looking for ways to cut costs. With the introduction of new apps such as Aetna CarePass, which allow users to monitor their own health-tracking data, employees willing to share their data could be offered incentives to lead a healthier lifestyle.  

In addition to offering financial discounts on health insurance for healthier employees, what if we could provide a salesperson with a more well-rounded view of how their health impacts their work performance? They may be more motivated to hit the gym or eat a healthier diet to lower their cholesterol levels if they knew it would lead to more closed deals.

Aetna also plans to introduce an employer portal that will provide the anonymous and aggregated data across the employee base (those that opt into the program). This could provide fascinating insights when combined with activity data from their FitBit or Jawbone partnerships to see trends in health data as relates to sales revenue.

What I like most about the idea of being able to measure the ROI of a healthy salesperson is not just the ability to measure the success of these corporate wellness programs, but the comfortability of employees taking advantage of them. When was the last time you complained that you wished you had more time to exercise, but you were just too focused on trying to hit your number to make it to the gym? What if you had the data to prove that since you started running 3x per week, your close rate has increased by 10%? That not only benefits the company, but your personal well being and happiness as well.

I personally would love to see the integration of this data. Living a healthy lifestyle is important to me, but so is having a successful career. Regardless if the goal is personal fitness or sales productivity, ultimately the end goal is the same: transformation.

Tell us what you think via Twitter at @salesforce or ask this self-confessed activity band addict direct at @shelleylaps.