Sales teams in many industries often struggle to determine the optimal measures of organizational performance and health. Enterprise technology sales is no different. Measures such as revenue per rep, attainment per rep, profit per rep, and similar per customer revenue and profit measures are all valid and relatively simple metrics. However, if we consider the mission of technical sales to include a broader set of objectives that include financial performance but also the more nebulous elements such as customer satisfaction, competitive displacement, customer technology adoption, etc., then a broader set of objective and subjective measures must be considered. This is where a balanced scorecard (BSC) may be of some use. A performance management system such as a BSC can be wholly representative of the organizational health of the technical sales force and will link overall sales strategy to planning and control.

Thanks to Kaplan and Norton, the concept of using a BSC as a holistic management tool has been around since the early 1990s. It focuses on distinct views of overall organizational performance in terms of executing strategy from four different perspectives:

1. Financial, or shareholder’s, which focuses on whether the organization is delivering the expected returns to its owners.
2. Internal, which includes the organization’s own process objectives and indicators of success.
3. Learning & Growth, which focuses on how the organization is going to improve and/or evolve for the future of its business.
4. Customer, which provides insight into customers’ perceptions of the organization.

Development and implementation of a BSC not only creates the organizational focus necessary to move the business forward, it also helps to gain the appropriate level of buy-in from staff and management as everyone becomes better attuned to the big picture. It provides a line of sight from strategic to operational activities and ensures that everyone is engaged in the appropriate activities that drive organizational success.  Over the next few posts I will present some ideas for how these categories might be represented for a technical sales organization.