Peer Benchmarking Checklist
General Sales
Problem
Best Place to find the Solution

Acquiring New
Customers


Field Execution


Filling the Funnel


Talent Selection
Sales
Compensation




General Benchmarking
Sites
Peers who scored well on
certain metrics:
 Lead to Close Ratio
 Win Rate
 Sales Cycle Length
Peer to Peer Best Practice
Sharing
Linked in General and
Industry Specific Groups
Industry Specific
Benchmarking Sites
Linked In Sales (and
Marketing) Specific Sites
Peer to Peer Best Practice
Sharing
Linked in General and
Industry Specific Groups
Benchmarking sites
Specific Linked In Groups
Industry Peer to Peer Best
Practice Sharing
Number of
Connections to
Find Solution
(3+ great; 1-2
Poor)
Implementation and Best Practice Adoption for Solution
Solutions that affect Acquiring New Customers require field
adoption by your sales reps. Customizing the best practice
solution for your company is only 25% of the work required.
The real work is having your team adopt the new solutions.
Daily, weekly and monthly activities with you (the Sales VP)
direct involvement is critical. You must use the solution
yourself if you
Executing in the field requires primarily qualitative research.
Most of the best practices require you to learn from peers
about what worked and didn’t work. Make sure you ask
questions around how they implemented the solutions. You
can then fast follow your successful peers. This typically
involves your direct involvement implementing the solutions
Look for solutions that involve getting early in the customers
buying process. This includes demand generation for both
marketing and sales. For example, social selling for sales reps
is critical to filling the funnel. Adopting these practices is
involving them in everyday cadence.
Talent selection requires a strict interviewing process. This
must involve a job tryout. It could be a role play, mock sales
presentation or field ride along. Adopting such a process
requires strict adherence. Probe your peers on how they
execute the job tryout and implementation of the process.
Sales compensation requires benchmarking OTE (On Target
Earnings) as well as fixed/variable payout. But it also requires
you to learn about pay mix. Does your industry pay on
Revenue or Margin (or both)? What is successful rolling out a
General Sales
Problem
Best Place to find the Solution

Sales Strategy


Sales Management


Sales Enablement
Sales Training
Sales Operations
Industry Specific
Benchmarking Sites
Linked In Sales (and
Marketing) Specific Sites
Industry Specific
Benchmarking Sites
Linked In Sales (and
Marketing) Specific Sites
Peer to Peer Best Practice
Sharing



Benchmarking sites
Specific Linked In Groups
Industry Peer to Peer Best
Practice Sharing

Peer to Peer Best Practice
Sharing
Linked in General and
Industry Specific Groups




Benchmarking Sites
Linked In Sales (and
Marketing) Specific Sites
Benchmarking Sites
Number of
Connections to
Find Solution
(3+ great; 1-2
Poor)
Implementation and Best Practice Adoption for Solution
program? How can your sales people accept the new comp
plan? These are all questions to ask your peers and Linked IN
groups.
Sales Strategy Problems can be complicated. Most often
Sales VPs try to treat a symptom vs. a root cause.
Benchmarking your core KPIs in addition to asking questions
on Linked In requires you to understand the answers. Make
sure you aren’t getting a solution to a symptom rather than
root cause.
Benchmark the KPIs for your sales managers in the same
industry. But also ask how your peers are driving Sales
Managers to coach and develop their people. Everyone
agrees on training their Sales Managers. Very few actually
implement this well. Ask questions around implementation
tactics.
Problems in this area tend to be big. These solutions typically
should involve not only other Sales VPs but CEOs Be sure to
not only benchmark your KPIs but discuss how CEOs solve the
problem as well as Sales VPs. Plan on implementing these
solutions over quarters not months.
Sales training is 90% adoption. Most sales people leave a
training event never to use the information taught. Focus your
discussions on how to implement and adopt the training. The
actual sales training is the easy part.
Look into several benchmarking sites for sales operations.
KPIs are a critical part of the solution through measuring it
properly. Also ask questions around what a sales operations
function does today vs. 3 years ago. Much has changed.
Empower them to be successful during adoption.