By Dave Anderson

What is the greatest measure of a manager? Personally, I think one of the fairest and most effective ways to gauge the worth of a manager, is to see whether or not they improve their people. Based on this criterion, how would you rate yourself? (Hint: if it's tough to measure your people's progress because of heavy turnover, this in itself speaks volumes).

At this week's meeting, discuss the following benchmarks -- and determine how you can use them to measure your team -- and yourself.

1. Production measurements: This is normally the easiest to quantify. Use 90-day averages and determine if the people you are responsible for are on the way up or the way down. You may argue that traffic counts have declined, thus measuring tangible outputs is not accurate. If this is the case, measure their closing ratios based on opportunities given, the increase or decrease in gross profit per sale, customer satisfaction scores, etc. If you think it is O.K. to let yourself off the hook and not measure improvements because traffic is down, go back in history and determine if your people improved their 90-day averages when business was better-or did you simply employ more salespeople to sell the greater numbers. Until you face reality about your people's progress-or lack of-you will never feel the urgency to improve them.

2. Skill measurements: How many more closing techniques are they fluid with now, compared to six months ago? Has their product demonstration ratio gone up or down? Do you even measure these things, and if not, why not? You can't improve them if you don't know where they are! Are they setting more or less appointments than six months ago, and what are their percentages of "shows" versus "no-shows"?

If you aren't tracking these areas, you have serious work to do because you are leaving the development of your people to chance, rather than creating a focused plan for their development. Your job is to lead them, not maintain them.

3. Repeat and Referral Sales: Do you measure what percentage of their sales comes from fresh ups, and which comes from repeat and referrals? Even brand new salespeople should be tracked for referrals they obtain and sell. The idea should be to make people less dependent on fresh traffic, and focus instead on working their customer base. These are the people who pay you the most, give you the highest CSI and are four to five times easier to close than a fresh up. If you are not focusing your people on mining this base of customers and measuring their progress-or lack of-it won't get done. Quite frankly, this is part of your job.

These three benchmarks will give you a good start in measuring improvements in key areas. They will also give you a much clearer look in the mirror when it comes to how effective you are at growing your people. Too many managers don't lead anymore. They simply preside, maintain and administer. But they can't hide it forever because once they are judged by whether or not their people improve, their measure as a manager is seen for what it really is -- for better or worse.

Credit:
Dave Anderson, author of the upcoming book Up Your Business: How to Fix, Build or Stretch Your Organization (Wiley & Sons), is a speaker and trainer for sales, management and leadership. He earned his business reputation by leading top national automotive dealerships to record breaking sales. For more information e-mail Dave@LearnToLead.com or go to: www.LearnToLead.com.

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