DCI's Publication Date: June 11, 1997

Improve Your Team’s Performance:
Benchmark and Baseline Behavior

By James E. Hackett
President, Bunker Hill Group

Managers are always looking to improve the performance of their sales team; always trying to motivate and drive their team to greater success. But before they can change the performance level of the team, they must be able to assess the current skill-sets of the individuals that make up their selling organization. They must be able to determine what their salespeople are doing right, and what skill-set behaviors their people can improve on for future success.

I believe that inputs affect outputs and give credence to the theory of "garbage-in/garbage-out." In my opinion, an important part of any manager’s job is to constantly and consistently monitor, measure and evaluate the performance inputs generated by their field personnel. In doing so, managers must closely examine the key performance behaviors that drive sales success. In short, managers must baseline and benchmark individual performance behaviors as they relate to overall success.

Here are some definitions that you can refer to:

Baselining: Within a competitive team environment, the establishment of a minimum acceptable performance standard regarding the ability to perform job-related key skill-sets.

Benchmarking: The positioning of team personnel on a competitive performance scale (high to low, top to bottom) relative to their demonstrated ability to perform job-related skill-sets.

Baselining and benchmarking are difficult for some managers to accomplish because they are unable to do so sitting behind a desk or tied to an office. The process of baselining and benchmarking a field sales team requires managers to be in the field with their people on a regular basis, observing those effective behaviors that create successful and profitable sales interactions. Managers must see firsthand the situations their sales professionals are in, and determine the skill-sets necessary to handle these situations in a confident and competent manner.

Managers must be with their people when they struggle with a client or customer situation. They can then determine what the real performance issues are and provide the sales professional appropriate coaching and guidance. Once managers have done this in-field observation, they can begin to determine key performance skill-sets necessary to produce high-performance results.

But identifying these skill-sets is just the beginning. Managers must rate and rank their people (benchmarking individuals within the team) relative to their abilities in these performance areas. Then, they must construct individual development for each of their people in an effort to increase their abilities in these critical areas. Only by clearly identifying where someone is currently on the performance scale can you begin to change performance and move them up on that scale.

Remember that a primary role of the manager is to assist people in the development of their skills and ability over the life of their employment. To do this effectively, managers must continually evaluate their people against a standard of performance consistent with their company culture and the competitive marketplace. When managers fail to establish and reinforce this performance-based environment, they are doing a great disservice to their salespeople, and in addition preventing the team from realizing its opportunity for unlimited success.

James Hackett, a featured speaker at DCI's Sales Management Conference, is a management consultant and president of the Bunker Hill Group, One Essex Green Drive, Suite One, Peabody, MA 01960.