Integrate Sales Metrics and Coaching for a Data-Driven Organization with Peter Kazanjy

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Yeah, for sure. I mean it's, it's funny that you're. I actually have these like metrics driver like cheat sheets sitting next to my, sitting next to me on my, on my desk here. We actually, we just like give them out to people. I for that you can actually find them on, on Atrium's website. You can just like grab them on there. But yeah, I mean I think the, so like we can start with, we can start with the SDR team first. I mean I think the, the first thing first there's is like there's varying levels of maturity and so like you know, if you're not very mature right now, the important thing is to like not overthink it and instead just kind of like start right. So like use an SDR organization as an example. Probably the most simplistic things that you would want to be paying attention to there would be like yeah, raw activity level. So like you know, call volume, email volume Things like that. In addition to that, you would want to be paying attention to unique number of accounts that are being interacted with, right? Unique number of contacts. Because this is where people can kind of get, can get tripped up is by doing tons and tons of activity, not across enough at bats, not enough accounts. And those are kind of be like table stakes. And of course your outputs, right? Like opportunity creation or meeting creation or whatever it is that you are kind of kpiing on there. Then one of the non obvious things that people really get kind of tripped up on is not sufficiently paying attention to net new accounts interacted with or net new contacts interacted with. Right? And so because oftentimes what can happen is SDRs can, it's like stale accounts, right? They can have their couple hundred or like, you know, there are a couple hundred accounts that they're going after and they can just be like, it's kind of like flogging a dead horse. And so what you want to make sure is that there's like ongoing inflow that's going on there. So like new accounts that are being interacted with, new contacts that are being interacted with. So those are all like quantity metrics right there. And then I think you were kind of mentioning earlier, oftentimes people kind of get like wrapped around the axle like, oh, it's an art, it's an art, et cetera. You can't like, you know, you can't measure my style here. You actually can, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. There's quality metrics, right? And so oftentimes people kind of just like more volume, more volume, volume, more volume, more activity, et cetera. But what you want to make sure, like the success in sales is all about a high quantity of high quality selling behavior. And so there's also a number of metrics that are really important in order for characterizing the level of quality of the behavior in question. So again, going back to SDRs, those would be things like email reply rate, right? And that's like a good echo, let's say. It's like it's not actually measuring the quality directly, but it's like an echo of the qualities. Because if somebody has an email reply rate problem, that could probably mean that can mean a variety of things. It can mean that they're not selecting good contacts, right? They're targeting bad people. It can mean that their subject lines are poor because they're not getting opens. It can mean that their messaging is poor because they're not eliciting responses. Can mean a variety of things, but it would indicate that there's something off there. So that would be an example of a quality metric. And there's others as well. Like their ratio between opportunities created and the number of accounts that are interacted with. Is somebody just like spraying and praying and not getting anything to boil, right? Like is your batting average low? And then the last kind of quality metric that I really like is the number of activities that somebody that is required by an SDR in order to create an opportunity. Right. So it's a measure of again of efficiency. And some of those, like, some of those are more simplistic and some of them are more complicated. You know, one of the things that we really like here at Atrium, like this is why, you know, we've invested so much time and energy in making it take like three minutes to turn on an Atrium account and have access to like over 100 KPIs that are really impactful for SDRs and, and for account executives. Because a lot of times people are like man, I really want to do those things. But like that sounds like a lot of work. And also like my rev ops team is like totally underwater. And like they keep telling me that they're going to give me these things but they never get around to it. So that's, that's on the SDR side. On the AE side, I. It's kind of like a similar situation, right? Where again the kind of raw volume that you want to be paying attention to there and this is kind of like contingent on sales motion, but is, you know, the AE equivalent of an SDR of like the SDR's email or calling is the meeting, right? Like the fundamental unit of customer of like you know, selling behavior by an account executive is a customer facing meeting. So starting with that, making sure that you're having, you know, like you're measuring the number of meetings that are happening, measuring the number of opportunities, opportunities that are in pipe for a given, like how loaded they are. Because oftentimes what people do is they pay attention to the pipeline. Like the amount of pipeline that folks have, that's important. But like the number of ops that are like on their plate, are they too high, are they too low? Usually people will say that they're too low, but they can be too high as well. And then it's a similar and then measures around like are people working those ops, right? So like number of touches on ops on a, you know, on a weekly basis or a monthly basis or what have you. And then then those are all the really, really, really basic ones. And Then you kind of have like the similar thing around inflow, right? So are people having new ops that are flowing into their pipe? Kind of like the equivalent of engaging with new accounts. Are people having new ops that are coming into their pipe or are they having like stagnation there? And then on the, on the quality front, like obviously win rate is, is the most important kind of like metric there, but then you can kind of get more granular there and say, hey, are people engaging? Like are they sufficiently multi threading accounts? Right? Like how many contacts are they engaging on a per account basis? That obviously is also important for SDRs. What are the conversion rates between stages? Once you have like north of five account executives who are doing the same sales motion, then you start having like enough data or enough sample where you can start like comparing people and can say, oh, okay, like this guy right here, he's got like a problematic conversion rate out of proposal as compared to everybody else. Like he's way lower, man. He's probably like not respecting, he's probably like not respecting exit criteria there. And he's getting things into, you know, he's putting things into proposal way prematurely, which of course is going to like screw up your forecasts and all sorts of other stuff there, right? So those are kind of like the more sophisticated measures there. By engendering more opportunities to have these coaching behaviors. One like you have more at bats and then it starts kind of, it's just in the water. Like, oh, that's what we do here. We get coached. Like, you know, it's okay. It's like it's not because I'm a bad human being and I'm like dumb or something that like, you know, Pete or Sean John or Melena or whoever is giving you some coaching feedback on your email or overheard your call or what have you. And then the other thing too is that when we see particularly good examples, both like opportunities for coaching and also good exemplars, we make sure to broadcast it very quickly. Like, hey guys, this is a great example of this right here. Oh, hey everybody. See how there was this boo boo right here. Like this is the right way of doing it. And what ends up, it's just kind of like the same way that a coach will be like, hey everybody, come in right? Like watch this right here. And so if you do that on a recurring basis, it goes from being like, oh no, here's this like, you know, I'm taking the cat to the vet versus just kind of like, okay, cool, this is what we do constantly on the data side, it's like a kind of a similar situation where you just want to, like, infuse it. And so this is one of the things that we do, our customers do quite a bit with Atrium is you just want to make sure that these metrics are getting in front of people. Right. Like, the OG version of this is like, you know, the TVs with the dashboards that everyone, like, ignores and whatever. Like, the more modern version of that is, like, making sure that that's, like, getting into people's slack, getting into people's inboxes, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Like, maybe they look at, like, every other one or every third one or whatever. But what it does is it sets this tone of, like, yeah, like, that's what we do here, right? Like, we. Like, we are data driven, and we have these coaching conversations. Like, those are the actions to kind of, like, change the culture, to make it such that it just becomes like it's just in the water and then, like, good things happen.

And I love that. I'll throw one bonus tip on there, y'.

All.

We taught sales math in onboarding. I love it because it's one thing to know what the numbers are. We actually. So it's actually in onboarding, we not only covered the metrics, what they meant and what impacted them, but I would give assignments based off these numbers. Peter ae, how many opportunities do you need based off these numbers? Peter ae what would your ACV have to come up to in order for you to hit your goal based on these numbers? Peter, sdr. How many dials did you actually ran math exercises in onboarding? Because I think people oftentimes get intimidated by the numbers, like, they see them. Like, I can tell you that Your close rate's 16%, but if you don't understand what that means, you're like, all right, whatever. So we had.

We.

We ran math in the onboarding to make sure. Understood how the metrics impacted each other.