These 3 areas are the key to your sales team’s success. As a sales leader, you can not hope to manage, guide, coach or even communicate in a meaningful manner without knowing precisely where each of your sales people stand in these categories. This document will take you through each of the 3 G.A.P. areas in detail, but it is up to you, the sales leader, to make it digestible to your team. One idea that may take some explanation is the logical, not linear nature of this process. Setting big picture as well as day-to-day goals, establishing tangible targets and grander scale objectives, will take your guidance to explain the importance of all of the pieces that are needed to succeed.

1. Presents
G.A.P.
Goals
Activity
Production
A White Paper for Sales Executives and Sales Management
Sell on Value Not on Price™
www.matriximpact.com – www.buildyoursalesmachine.com
johnk@matriximpact.com
216-347-6729

2. G.A.P.
Goals – Activity - Production
Summary
These 3 areas are the key to your sales team’s success. As a sales leader, you
can not hope to manage, guide, coach or even communicate in a meaningful
manner without knowing precisely where each of your sales people stand in these
categories.
This document will take you through each of the 3 G.A.P. areas in detail, but it is
up to you, the sales leader, to make it digestible to your team. One idea that may
take some explanation is the logical, not linear nature of this process. Setting big
picture as well as day-to-day goals, establishing tangible targets and grander
scale objectives, will take your guidance to explain the importance of all of the
pieces that are needed to succeed.
Lastly, this process is about transparency. Your team needs to know what you
expect out of them and that they will be held them accountable. But here is the
twist, you are accountable too. If you invest the time to define and describe this
process to your team and they invest the time to do it, then you darn well better
track and measure their attainment. Regular individual meetings with your reps to
cover their goals and their achievement are a must.
Goals
$ = How Much: The road map to success begins with their goals. The first goal to
know about your sales people is how much money they want to make. Not “about
this” or “almost that” but exactly to the PENNY how much they want to make.
The first aspect to consider is time
management. No goal setting process is
complete without taking TIME into
consideration. It is the ultimate commodity,
without it, you have nothing. The graphic to
the left speaks for itself. Make sure your
people understand the correlation between
hours and what they get paid.

3. The second aspect of how much they want to make is what they do with their time.
We always want our salespeople to be able to answer these 2 questions…
• Are you valuing your time at the level of money you want to make?
• If not who will?
$75,000 = Are you working like someone who makes $75,000 a year – someone
who makes roughly $37 every sales hour of the day?
$100,000 = Are you working like someone who makes $100,000 a year –
someone who makes roughly $50 every sales hour of the day (almost a dollar a
minute)?
$120,000 = Are you working like someone who makes $120,000 a year –
someone who makes roughly $60 every sales hour of the day (or a dollar a
minute)?
$150,000 = Are you working like someone who makes $150,000 a year –
someone who makes roughly $75 every sales hour of the day (or over a dollar a
minute)?
$200,000 = Are you working like someone who makes $200,000 a year –
someone who makes roughly $100 every sales hour of the day?
$250,000 = Are you working like someone who makes $250,000 a year –
someone who makes roughly $125 every sales hour of the day (or two dollars a
minute)? I could keep going but you get the point.
It boils down to doing what is most important to
achieve your goals at all times. To our right is a friend
of ours, his name is URGENT and he is a member of
the Best Practice League™.
His superpower is to remind us of that very thing.
Always be moving forward; always be doing what is
most important. If we don’t we will get caught in the
minutia that will clog our schedule and can KILL our
productivity.
With such a limited number of true selling hours
each day, your time needs to be invested with people
who should, can, and will, either buy your offering or
help you progress the sale. A moment with anyone
else is a time management tragedy.

4. Big Picture Goals
Part of your job as Sales Leader is to know the answer to the following questions;
What are their dreams? What are their financial goals for the next 5 years? What
kind of car would they have if they could? Where is their dream vacation spot?
What kind of house do they want? What type of renovations do they want to do in
their current house? When do they want to be able to retire comfortably? Do they
want to be “snowbirds” and live south or west in the winter and come back north
and east in the summer?
There are, of course, many more potential questions, but the point is your team
needs to have something BIGGER than just “make the 20 calls a day” as their
goal. There has to be a pot-o-gold at the end of rainbow, something that is more
than just the work, something that is the goal of accomplishing the work. Without
this, work or the job has minimal meaning. It is your responsibility to know what
these goals are, then help to achieve them. The nice by-product is if they achieve
their goals you will achieve your goals.
Activity
Success in sales can be boiled down to simple mathematics, X prospecting pieces
leads to Y appointments leads to Z sales. But just like in math, much is dependent
on having the correct numbers and proper formula to use. Below is a list of
potential areas of activity to base goals and measure.
• Number of prospecting touches mailed/emailed/dropped-off
• Number of outbound prospecting calls (dials or in-person) for new business
• Number of outbound prospecting calls (dials or in-person) for business from
existing customers
• Number of discoveries conducted (initial sales meetings) number of
presentations given
• Number of informational touch pieces mailed/emailed/dropped-off during the
course of the selling cycle
• Number of proposals generated and presented

5. • Number of referrals obtained
• Number of trade shows and/ or events (selling oportunities) attended
• The conversion/success rates for all of the above
I can’t tell you what is most important for YOU to goal, measure and track;
everybody’s business and market is so varied and different. I can tell you that
what you choose to measure and track better be what is most important to
success in your business.
The BIG 4 in my book are: Prospecting Touches, Calls, Discoveries, and
Presentations. Everything flows from these 4 activities. If enough touches are not
sent out you can’t make enough calls, not enough calls means not enough
discoveries etc…
It is also VERY important to know conversion rates, how many to how many. The
conversion metric tells you what you need to do and in what volume.
Conversion Metric Example: A low conversion rate of calls to appointments means
either they are targeting the wrong people, sending out poor prospecting touches,
not sending out enough touches or need help with their phone skills. Any of these
ailments are deadly to creating new sales and must be addressed immediately.
There are some peripheral activity goal targets that can impact your team’s
development. The weight you give these is completely dependent on the maturity
and development of your sales team. A younger sales team, the peripheral
activities are crucial, a team of seasoned vets not as much. A mix of experience
would depend on your team dynamics and so on. Below is a list of some of those
activities.
• Reading of industry or professional books
• Listening to developmental audio, watching video material, listened
to or viewed classes or seminars/webinars
• Submitting product or service ideas
• Making improvement suggestions and providing their solutions
• Participating in company activities outside the sales role (e.g.
strategy sessions, writing an internal newsletter, etc.)
• Mentoring younger, inexperienced sales reps
Only you as sales leader can decide what the most important activities or K.P.I.
(Key Performance Indicators) are and what should be considered in a sales
person’s goals. Don’t worry though; Matrix has more than a few examples that will
help you in your decision process.

6. Production
Where the rubber meets the road, all the activity in the world does not matter if
you do not put numbers on the board. Not dissimilar from activity, a big part of this
metric is in knowing the right productivity numbers. The Rosetta stone of these
statistics is the A.U.S.P. (Average Unit Selling Price). It tells us how much of
virtually everything we need to achieve our goals.
A.U.S.P. Example: Your goal is $1,000,000,000 this year in sales. You’re A.U.S.P.
is $10,000. That means your goal needs to be minimally 100 sales this year. 100
sales this year means you need to go on X discoveries, make Y calls and send Z
prospecting touches.
There are other key measurements as well to the left of our favorite species of
tree.
• A.U.S.P. = average unit selling price
(what either the average or sale or
average customer is worth to you in
dollars)
• Total sales revenue generated
• Number of units sold
• Number of actual closed deals
• Number of new customers
• Number of added on sales
• Growth (percentage) of each figure
This is a rare case when I believe that EACH of these metrics is crucial to know.
Goals must be set and tracked for each of these results. The beauty is we can
backward engineer training and coaching all the way to corresponding/correlating
activity through these outcome’s correct interpretation.
This is where our friend Coach of the Best Practice
League™ comes in. His superpower of experience and
judgment allows him to determine what the results
mean and most importantly what action is needed
based on the results.
Always quick with either carrot, stick or more training,
Coach always balances his reaction based on the
situation and the individual sales person.

7. Caveats
Now that we have defined our Goals, Activity and Production we need to set some
basic rules in terms of setting your targets and measurement processes. Some of
these are sales person specific and some will need your guidance as sales leader
but they are all critical to the success of the process.
First the “Do’s…
• Continually qualifying all suspects, prospects and customers is the best way
to make sure you’re investing sales time wisely.
• Enthusiasm and confidence are generally at their highest after winning
new business. Enjoy the moment (but only for a moment), and then let
success fuel your next sales contacts immediately. In fact, consider using it to
help you through one of your most difficult current sales efforts.
• Every day is 20% of your sales week; understand the importance of every
day, hour and opportunity.
• Every month invest 30 minutes in yourself and step through a self-
assessment as a private check on your value and progress as a sales
professional. Forget the fluff and examine yourself as your manager might (or
ultimately will). Make self-evaluation a consistent part of your sales discipline
and you are guaranteed to have better results
Now some “Don’ts”…
• Talking with people who can't move the sales process along. A TRUE sales
day is made up of contact with real people who can buy your product or can
help you sell your product.
• Unnecessary research activities; what’s too much? There's really no
definitive answer, it's particular to your sales world. Many people start to get a
gut feel for when they should move on. The key is to act on it and make the
call (rather than making sure every little thing is known before the call – fine
line, of course). You might be surprised what you can learn by asking a
straightforward question of the person who answers the phone or responds to
an email.
• "Crafting" or "drafting" a script, email, worksheet/form or letter
• Designing a “new” process to streamline other daily activities
That’s it folks. Now the hard work starts, the DOING! And
remember you can either make sales or make excuses but
you can’t do both!