What does it take to build world class sales organization? Salesforce.com executives, Scott Keane and David McNeil, recently shared their own strategies for developing sales talent through coaching as well as how to keep salespeople movtivated when revenue is down.

Here's a look at what these two sales gurus had to say.

When you do 1:1 coaching with your managers and salespeople, what are some of the most common problems they have?

David: Time management. For managers in particular, it’s helping them understand the difference between big rocks and pebbles - where they should spend their time to have the most impact. When you move up the leadership chain, you’re looking for the 20% that will have 80% impact. So you need to distinguish between what’s critical and what’s not, what’s impactful and not impactful.

I’m also coaching managers on how to have constructive performance conversations with sales reps. I work with sales managers to understand the personal drivers and objectives of the sales rep, so they can align performance goals and objectives to the rep’s personal drivers and not to the organizational drivers. When a sales rep joins the organization, we ask the manager to spend time figuring out what their personal drivers are and what they are trying to achieve. If you’re not aligning the goals of the individual to those of the organization, then it’s impossible to get high performance out of them.

You start off with a young EBR, what are the things you look for to determine if they’ve matured enough to be promoted?

David: When I’m considering EBRs for promotion, there’s a lot of process to it. You want them to go from driving activities to having deeper, more constructive conversations. Do they really understand the context of the problems that they’re solving and the business impact they’re having? If they can answer those questions, then they’re well positioned for the next role. It’s about spending time with the customer, really helping them succeed, and if they can’t articulate what that looks like, what that feels like, what the different drivers are behind that success, then they’re not ready for that turn.

Are there any resources that salespeople can use outside of work to train and hone their skills?

David: I encourage my team to spend time outside of work with customers. Really spending time understanding what makes a company run, what makes a company successful, and how they make money. Walk the halls with them. The more time you can spend with your customers understanding their business, the more effective you will be in your current role.

On top of that, I encourage them to read industry journals and stay abreast of the latest industry news, so that when they’re in discussions, they can be more relevant. We want them to add value by sharing insights and case studies that they’ve learned from other customers, and help their customer think differently about their business.

How do you enable your team to meet its goals and metrics?

Scott: One of the ways we do it is by providing the team with full visibility into how they’re doing against their goals and metrics. Any SR can see how they’re doing at any point in the day. As a matter of fact, I was contacted by the team that manages the Salesforce application and they said, “two of the SRs on your team refreshed dashboards and they’re in the top of the company for number of times they refresh their dashboard during the day to find out how they were doing.” It was something crazy like five or ten times per hour. They were going in, not only to find out how they were doing with their metrics, but also to find out how they match up against everyone else. Dashboards are really key.

Hypothetical situation: revenue is down, salespeople are not hitting their quotas. What do you do to motivate them?

David: The first thing you need to do when you’re dealing with an underperforming team is that you need to acknowledge it. You’ve gotta say, "this is not where we all, collectively, want to be." As a manager, you must put yourself in the situation. You’re feeling the pain along with them, and you really want to get in and help everyone succeed. Rather than telling them they’re not meeting objectives, you must ask them what’s going on and how you can help. Find out what’s hindering their success, and then reorient time to help them take down some of those barriers.

Are there any specific tactics?

David: We use leaderboards and contests to try to motivate and encourage the right behavior. Typically, when we have an underperforming team, we’ll ask: who do they want to beat? They’re highly competitive. It’s great when a team realizes that they want to be the #1 calling team or the #1 pipeline team. Then, we orient leaderboards, contests, and spiffs around helping them achieve those objectives.

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