MEMBERSHIP SELLING AND
SALES MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS

If You Can Measure It, You Can Manage It

Everyone knows that quota achievement is a critical measurement of sales success. Still, we believe knowing how you get there is far more influential. This is especially important to help chambers drive membership recruiting success. Unfortunately, we find that many chambers only focus on measuring results. If we want to know how many new members we have this month, we can easily count them up.  New revenue is a simple math equation.

Of course, these results are important for measuring progress. But by the time we do the count, it’s too late to influence the results. In the end, making quota doesn’t tell the complete story. The results can’t be analyzed or utilized to impact future outcomes. As such, quota achievement is a trailing indicator, which means the number is measured when it’s too late to make adjustments.

The objective is for chamber sales leaders to look deeper than quota and truly understand membership rep performance. You must know if your membership team’s efforts are focused on actions that drive results. Recruiting activities are leading indicators, which focus on all the accomplishments that lead up to your chamber welcoming a new member.

For example, a large new member investment can blow away quota and make it seem as though a member rep is performing well. However, if recruiting activity is low, future results will suffer. 

Conversely, failing to make quota can make it appear that a member rep is struggling or underperforming. However, if your rep has reliably met or surpassed his/her daily recruiting activity minimums, s/he will be primed for several productive months ahead.

Our client partners track 13 critical leading indicators that are directly linked to the foundational elements, linked-steps, and stages of our recruiting process. This level of transparency and accountability is critical because even the smallest improvements can drive significant results.

We suggest that you review your chamber’s recruiting process and establish the essential sales activities required to drive results for your organization. Following are a few examples of activities that your chamber can start tracking to help determine individual rep and team productivity:

     * Prospecting calls and emails

     * Follow-up calls and emails

     * Meetings

     * Proposals

     * Outcomes of each activity

Lack of focus leads to underperformance and missed forecasts. Tracking critical sales activities creates a logical system of accountability that keeps your membership team aware and focused on the sales activities that drive results. With everyone on the same page, your sales leader can effectively uncover when someone is struggling and provide coaching and support to positively influence performance in real-time.

These metrics also illuminate whether your team is pursuing the right prospects and clarify what critical deals may require your sale leader's immediate assistance. We highly recommend taking the time to pinpoint and start tracking the sales activities that matter most to your chamber.  

As always, we’re easy to talk to. Feel free to reach out with questions you have about this technique or other membership sales or retention issues.

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