After certification, you’ll typically want to have two to three days of a “ride-along” where you (or a more experienced member of your team) goes with the new hire to show them the ropes, answer additional questions, and provide hands-on training.
- RGA Sales Certification
- A review of your company’s internal processes
- Training on tools, software, etc they’ll need for the job
- Memorization of some kind of sales script
- Expectations and standards for performance (we’ll cover this in more detail later)
Success in sales management, broadly speaking, is about tracking and rewarding behaviors that drive results. So your success hinges not just on the people you hire, but more critically on the behaviors and metrics you prioritize.
For this reason, we recommend a series of two “check-ins” with your salespeople - one daily, and one weekly. A daily check-in is a series of questions you ask your salespeople, individually, so they can self-report their sales activity and results. Your weekly check-in will review important metrics, like won/lost ratio and average deal size, to see where improvement is needed and where you can adjust your processes to drive revenue.
Here’s a sample daily check-in list, used at a Rain Gutter Association member’s business (and used with their permission).
Daily Check-In
Estimates
1. How many homes did you measure yesterday?
2. How many estimates did you deliver yesterday?
3. Out of those, how many were delivered during your first site visit?
Meetings and Interactions
1. How many people did you meet with yesterday?
2. Did you use Ingage? (presentation software)
Closing Deals
1. What did you close yesterday?
Lead Management
1. How many leads came in yesterday for you?
2. How many leads did you self generate yesterday?
Future Planning
1. How many leads do you have to run today?
2. Do you have enough leads?
Additional Questions
1.What obstacles or challenges did you face yesterday?
2. How did you overcome them?
3. What do you need help with?
Answers to these questions can be tracked in an excel sheet to measure results over time and to compare one rep's answers to another.
Because this list relies on self-reporting, responses can be fibbed. This is resolved through the weekly check-in, which relies on reporting from your CRM system, instead of your sales reps.
Compare your reps weekly performance with the following goals in a one-on-one:
Close Rate: 50%
Profit Margin: 40-60%
# of leads run per day: 4
Annual Revenue Goal: $1,000,000 per rep (high performers should get closer to 1.5 mil)
If a rep’s performance consistently runs underneath these metrics, consider letting them go. If they run quite a bit higher, dive deeper with the rep to see how you can systemize their approach.
Other important metrics
Time to estimate: Time to estimate tracks the time between when a lead is received to when your salesperson delivers their estimate. If a lead has been sitting for days and days on end, the odds of it closing go down significantly. A long time to estimate is also a sign that a rep is not managing their time well.
Average Sale: A rep’s average ticket price. This is most useful to determine who on the team is effective at upselling customers. The higher the average, the more effective the rep.
Number of Self Generated Leads: Encouraging your team to generate their own leads fosters initiative and diversifies your lead sources. Reps should have a handful of self-generated leads a week. Be prepared to offer additional compensation for these leads should they close.
Response Time: This tracks how quickly leads are responded to by staff (not just salespeople) when they submit an inquiry or call in. This should be measured in minutes (or even seconds), not hours or days. How these calls are handled should be scripted and memorized.
A robust CRM - like Jobber, Housecall Pro, or Jobnimbus - will help track these numbers for you.
What to Pay
Standard compensation for gutter sales is 10% of each job sold at full price without discounts. Discounts offered to customers are typically reflected in commission percentage.
It’s also recommended that you offer a profit sharing arrangement for jobs sold above full price. For W2 Salespeople, this could be 30% of the additional sum. For 1099 salespeople, that could be 50%. This profit sharing arrangement encourages your sales rep to actually sell their jobs (spend time with customers, walk through a presentation, negotiate, etc)...rather than simply leave estimates behind and compete on price. If you are worried about a rep price gouging customers, you can simply cap additional compensation.
Our mission at the RGA is to empower the seamless gutter industry through innovation and education. If you find content like this valuable, consider becoming a member. Your membership includes access to certification coursework for gutter installers and salespeople, valuable savings through partner vendors, access to 50+ gutter specific safety talks, and valuable networking opportunities. Join today to shape the future of the seamless gutter industry!