Tracking the progress of a 30+ team is no easy task, especially when you’re doing it manually. This was something Sales Manager Terri-Lynne Anderson was all too familiar with. Wanting to improve the visibility and efficiency of her remote team, she turned to Databox.
Managing a sales team is a big task. You’ve got to set goals, keep an eye on progress, and make sure every person is contributing to the collective success of the team. And doing all of that manually takes a lot of hours out of your day!
This is a common challenge across sales managers worldwide, including Terri-Lynne Anderson, Sales Manager at MarketLauncher – a boutique firm that provides lead development, market research, and prospecting services to technology companies.
Every week, managers at MarketLauncher are expected to share updates about their progress – pipeline, goals, activity metrics, and more. This involved hours updating a whiteboard with all their KPIs. And for Terri-Lynn, who manages 30 sales reps, this meant manually tracking the progress of each specialist. She explains ‘I would have to go into HubSpot and then Excel and compare the HubSpot data to the Excel goals’.
This also created a problem for individual sales reps. As a fully remote team, reps didn’t have much visibility into their performance. To stay on top of their goals, they relied on outdated spreadsheets, and in some cases, a more traditional pen-and-paper method.
The team at MarketLauncher quickly realized they needed a better way to keep their goals front and center.
As MarketLauncher’s team searched for a solution, they had specific criteria in mind. They wanted a tool that could easily integrate with HubSpot, consolidate data from all of their clients in one place, and show more granular insights into accounts and team member progress.
After trying a few different tools, their connection with HubSpot led them to Databox. During their evaluation, Databox not only met their needs but was easy to set up and use. The standout feature? Goals. Terri-Lynne emphasizes, ‘We couldn’t do that in HubSpot: set goals and assign them to team members.’
To improve visibility for remote teams, managers started by building dashboards. Every team member got a personalized dashboard that included all the information about the clients they were working on, the specific goals they were assigned for those clients, and a summary of their overall results. And as part of this setup, individual Goals were created and assigned to each team member.
From a management perspective, the focus was on monitoring overall team performance. By creating a high-level dashboard, Terri-Lynne was able to see every single team member’s results at a glance. She explains ‘Based on this I can see right away who is falling behind, where more action can be taken, and can communicate with the team member right away’.
To help everyone easily access the data, management shared the dashboards using a shareable link. Now, there were no more questions or excuses. Each rep had full visibility into their tasks, goals, and performance. ‘They have their results and goals in one or two dashboards. And that’s been one of the biggest game changers for them’ she adds.
For Terri-Lynne, who looks after many clients and team members, tracking progress and performance became much easier. She starts her day by checking the dashboards and plans her daily schedule based on the results she gets from Databox. ‘Everything I need to know is in one place’ she adds.
And for those weekly updates, managers created overview dashboards that were automatically delivered every week – saving the team a lot of time.
Now that every team member has a clear understanding of their goals, it’s easier for them to know what needs to be done. For example, if someone reaches or exceeds the goal for one client, they can shift their focus to another that may need more attention. And with multiple team members working on the same accounts, they can also keep an eye on each other’s progress, fostering a healthy sense of competition.
Previously, the team achieved about 70% of their overall goals across all clients. Since using Databox, they consistently hit 90% of their goals, showing a significant 20% improvement in hitting their targets.
‘We believe the main reason for that is that people are regularly tracking their goals in Databox. They can see them, and know where they stand, and it motivates them. They know when to shift and when to pivot’ she adds.