“It’s not that a rep has to be amazing at everything. They just can’t be terrible at anything.” – Rob Käll, Cien CEO.

Cien’s CEO and co-founder, Rob Käll joined Joe Vignolo on Outreach’s Sales Engagement Podcast.

Outreach.io is a leading sales engagement platform that accelerates revenue growth by optimizing interactions throughout the customer lifecycle.

In the podcast, Rob Käll explains how sales managers can find nuggets in their sales data to measure and improve rep productivity.

Rob and Joe discuss the validity of traditional measuring indicators, such as managers looking at the nature of calls and emails instead of just the numbers, as well as identifying and solving weak areas in reps, which can add more value to the company.

While you could be looking at traditional sales KPIs such as the number of connected calls, responded emails, opportunities created, meetings held, you run the risk of painting a distorted picture of what’s really going on in your sales team.

To understand your sales reps’ productivity, explains Rob Käll, you need a complete view of your sales environment, which you can get by looking at three distinct areas:

1. Lead and pipeline factors

These are the things that have been delivered by your marketing team. At times you have leads that are great quality and other times not.

2. People factors

These are softer metrics like, work ethic, product knowledge, closing ability and communication skills.

3. Macro factors

These are elements that are typically outside of your control but can still affect your ability to sell. These are factors such as competitive pressures, seasonality or business cycles.

While all three of factors can be challenging to measure, applying machine learning and natural language processing to your CRM data can help you understand how your sales team is performing in these areas.

“Cien’s goal isn’t to replace Salesforce or Outreach.io, but to help you understand how your team can move the needle.”

Tune into the full episode to uncover what Rob has to say about how productivity should be defined, measured and how to achieve predictable growth.

Time Stamps

• Sales Productivity: 2:02
• Hidden KPIs: 3:06
• Measuring Indicators: 5:06
• Advice to Sales Leaders: 6:47
• About Cien: 9:12
• What Sales Managers Can Do: 11:36
• Productivity Results: 14:56
• Takeaway: 17:52

You can connect with Rob on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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