Sales should enable, not prevent, an otherwise successful entrepreneurial business from meeting its revenue goals. Your Sales Scorecard is the litmus test that tells you whether your sales approach hinders or enables your business.

The journey to a mature Sales Scorecard that prompts actions to drive the right business results is just that. A journey! Here are three signs that may help you to shed light on improving your Sales Scorecard:

1. You Are Having a Hard Time Predicting Revenue Performance
2. Your Scorecard Isn’t Prompting Action in Your Level-10 Meetings
3. You Are Taking Actions, But Not Seeing Results

You Are Having a Hard Time Predicting Revenue Performance

I met with a prospect last week that was having a challenging time predicting where her revenue was going to come from in the next quarter. It was important to her to manage cash flow and to apply informed decision-making in scaling up her delivery team.

Not surprising, after some discussion, it was clear that she did not have a reliable sales pipeline to look at when it came to business planning. Each quarter, when it was time to forecast revenue, she was spending the better part of a day calling her sales reps for impromptu pipeline reviews. In those meetings, she was attempting to get a sense of which business might close in the upcoming quarter based on very subjective insights.

If you are having trouble predicting revenue performance, here are a few possible causes:

• Pipeline: You do not have a pipeline with objective criteria and associated Sales Scorecard Metrics to drive predictability.
• Lagging metrics: Your Sales Scorecard is full of lagging metrics. In short, your scorecard is tracking what already happened, not what will happen in the future.
• Sales buy-in: You have an alignment challenge. Your sales team does not understand how their sales activities and metrics affect the progress of the business as a whole. So, they do not buy into the scorecard and are not properly using your CRM.
• Lack of relevance: Your team tracks metrics that don’t necessarily lead to results. An example of this is tracking # of emails or phone calls with no qualifier as to who these emails or phone calls are contacting.

Your Scorecard Isn’t Prompting Action in Your Level-10 Meetings

Your Level 10 gets off to a great start with everyone’s personal and business best. Then it is time for the Data component. You open up your Sales Scorecard, read all of the metrics, and then transition to talking about your Rocks.

The good news is that you are ahead of schedule for your meeting! The bad news is that, once again, you missed an opportunity to capture issues or actions from the Sales Scorecard Discussion.

Glossing over taking actions based on your Sales Scorecard in Level-10 Meetings is not a good idea. If this sounds all too familiar, at least one of these things is probably the case:

• Wrong metrics: If you are not tracking the right metrics, taking the right actions is a guessing game. A mature Sales Scorecard takes time to evolve. Ensure you are open to doing what it takes to evolve your scorecard to the point of maturity. Are you ready to start the journey?
• Reps checking a box: Your reps do only what is necessary to meet their goals. For example, if “# of emails” is tracked, then meaningless emails sent to the wrong person count the same as a thoughtful touchpoint providing value to an ideal prospect. If this is the case, you probably have more significant problems, but it is challenging to take the right action if it appears that the work is getting done.
• Lagging metrics: Lagging metrics tell you about the past. Leading and activity metrics tell you about the future, so tracking those will enable you to take the right action to course-correct if need be.
• Goals are unachievable: Tracking the right metrics is a great start, but setting the bar too high on the targets can be a de-motivator. If the metric has been red for 13 weeks, why take action now?

You Are Taking Actions, But Not Seeing Results

Your scorecard looks good with a lot of green and not too much red, and your to-do’s/tasks are completed week after week, but the results just aren’t there. This can be really frustrating!

More than likely, the root causes of these problems point back to:

• No Sales Strategy: A Sales Scorecard measures how the Sales Strategy is working. If there is no Sales Strategy, then you probably sat down to create the metrics on your Sales Scorecard randomly instead of based on a strategy that will enable the Sales team to meet the goals of the business as a whole.
• Holes in your Sales Process: For example, I often see sales organizations that track # of proposals as a metric. This is a miss. If your sales team is tracking # of proposals without any additional qualifier, then a fantastic proposal that helps an ideal prospect with big problems counts the same as a proposal developed for someone that would not be a good fit for your team to serve. If this is the case, the hole in your sales process is that your reps are not qualifying.

Your Sales Scorecard Should Be Fueling Growth—Not Holding You Back

If you’re struggling with unpredictable revenue, a scorecard that isn’t driving action, or sales efforts that don’t translate into results, it’s time to make a change.

Join us on April 9th for our Free Scorecard Masterclass and learn how to build a high-impact sales scorecard that turns data into decisions and drives measurable growth. You’ll gain the insights you need to align your scorecard with your business goals and start seeing real, intentional results.

Spots are limited—register now and take control of your sales growth!
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