Great sales managers are masters at holding their teams accountable to activity metrics and results. They track dials, demos, discovery calls, and deals.
But here’s the irony: while sales managers are busy tracking everyone else, few people are tracking them.
What Gets Measured Improves — Even for Managers
Most organizations hold managers accountable to one thing: the monthly or quarterly revenue goal. That’s a lagging indicator. What’s missing are the leading indicators — the sales management activities and behaviors that actually create consistent achievement of those goals.
There’s no one-size-fits-all formula; the right metrics depend on your team’s size, market, and maturity. But here are a few universal ones to consider as you look at holding yourself accountable to sales management metrics.
1. Ride-Alongs (or Listen-Ins)
Whether in the field or on Zoom, nothing replaces hearing real conversations with real prospects.
If you expect your salespeople to hold “X” number of meetings per week, hold yourself to observing “X” number of meetings. Coaching from the sidelines doesn’t work if you never see the game.
How many “ride-alongs” are you conducting each week or month? Are you tracking and measuring the quantity and quality of this activity?
2. Pre-Briefs (Not Just Debriefs)
Debriefing a call is valuable. But pre-briefing — ensuring your rep knows how to handle objections before they happen is where you reap the real return on your coaching. If a salesperson can’t recall the knowledge or skill BEFORE the sales meeting, they are certainly not capable of recalling it during a sales meeting. For example, you can ask:
- “What will you say if the prospect won’t share a budget?”
- “How will you respond if there’s no clear pain? What will you say?”
- “What if a new decision maker walks into the room? What will you say or do?”
- “Let me hear your value proposition for this new line of business you are introducing to your client.”
If your rep starts with, “Well, I’d probably say something like…” — stop them. “Something like” isn’t a strategy. Rehearse the real conversation.
How many pre-briefs are you conducting each week?
3. Recruiting and Interviewing
Confession time. Anyone besides me ever held onto a poor performer too long? You’ve coached, you’ve ridden along, you’ve prayed — and that sales dog still won’t hunt.
The real challenge isn’t the rep. The real challenge is that you have not conducted consistent activities to build a sales bench. So….you hold onto poor performers.
It’s the same problem your reps have when they hold onto unqualified prospects. It’s called empty pipeline syndrome. Your people pipeline is empty!
Set a KPI for yourself. How many candidate interviews will you conduct each month? Keep your sales bench full and you’ll keep your sales funnel full.
4. Coaching Meetings (1:1s and Team)
I once worked with a sales manager who had 16 direct reports — yes, sixteen. She had every excuse in the book to skip coaching sessions.
But she didn’t.
When I asked why, she said, “I’ve got a great team. But they get distracted if we miss our weekly check-ins.”
Consistency creates culture. No excuses, no cancellations — just coaching.
How many one-on-ones are you holding each week or month?
Final thought.
Sales managers, if you want to be a better leader, hold yourself to the same standard you expect of your team.
Define your management activity metrics. Track them. Talk about them. Improve them.
As Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Or, in sales-speak: “If it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen.”
Good Selling and Leading!