Suresh MadhuvarsuCo-Founder & CEO, SalesTable AI · Co-Founder & CEO at SalesTable

Sales Leaders - Shift Your Focus to Inputs, Not Just Outcomes

11 Feb 2024 · 3 min

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2:33

In this talk, the speaker highlights a recent shift among sales leaders (2023‑2024) from measuring only outcomes—quota attainment, revenue percentages—to also tracking the underlying inputs that drive those outcomes. Citing a Pareto‑style statistic that 17 % of sellers generate 81 % of revenue, the speaker argues that focusing solely on outcomes masks the activities of the remaining 80 % of the team. He defines key sales inputs such as prospecting methods, pipeline construction, and time spent in each funnel stage, and stresses that understanding these inputs will help leaders identify efficiency gaps and improve overall team performance. As a technology vendor for sales leaders, he notes the importance of aligning product capabilities with these input‑focused metrics and invites other leaders to share their observations on the input‑vs‑output debate.

Chapters

Hi there. Especially in 2023 and 2024, we've seen a major shift on a lot of sales leaders, how they are really thinking about their team efficiency and outcomes. Last year, we've heard sales leaders talking about, hey, I really care about a lot of outcomes, and that's really what I'm measuring everybody in my team. While the outcomes is great, I think that's also sort of sometimes misleading because If you have 1 or 2, that probably is fine. But if you have a lot of sellers on your team, then you don't know who is doing what that is getting them those outcomes. And that's a very important thing because especially based on the recent stat that 17% of the sellers actually bring in the 81% of the revenue, that really keeps a lot of sales leaders wondering what's happening to the rest of the 80% of the sellers. Why are they not able to really bring in or meet the quota equivalent to those high performers? So that really brings down to a shift that we are really seeing in the recent months, which is a lot of sales leaders are saying it's important for us to have the outcomes, but at the same time, we want to know what inputs are there, which is basically to really go back to the metaphor of inputs and outputs. are super important for us. And in which case, of course, I mean, the outcomes, whether they are meeting the quota or what's the percentage, the duration, those are all the outcomes. So that's one part. But what are the inputs in the sense of how did they really prospect? How did they really close the deals? And what's the typical pipeline that they were able to build? And what's the time between the funnel that they are going through? And all these things that are really going in as inputs is also very important. And a lot of sales leaders in the recent months have told us that that's one of the things that is going to really differentiate, especially in 2024. Again, for us as a tool technology vendor for sales leaders, that is very important for us to understand where sales leaders are spending their time and where they think the efficiencies are coming from. I would love to hear more from the other leaders on what you guys are seeing in the industry and how you are thinking about the inputs versus outcomes. Thank you.