Product Update: Helping Sales Managers Scale Top-Performers

Srivatsa Marthi

Product at SetSail

Table of contents:

I'm Sri Marthi and I help make sales leaders successful as part of the product team at SetSail. I've been working at the intersection of sales & machine learning for the last 5 years. I joined SetSail 2 years ago because it's based on a philosophy that one of the best paths to self-improvement is to focus on the little things right in front of us, one step at a time. SetSail helps customer-facing teams to make those self-improvement steps each and every day in a positive way by using carrots, not sticks.

At SetSail we leverage machine learning to analyze what’s working in a sales process and create incentive programs that award points to reps for achievements along the deal cycle. These points can then be redeemed towards prizes or paid out as cash as part of the compensation cycle.

These points incentivize good behavior in reps. Our customers find that top-point-performers in SetSail have nearly double the quota performance as low-point-performers. I’ve included a chart below of the averages:

(We measure this by breaking reps into 4 performance buckets (quartiles) based on their point totals in SetSail and then averaging the quota attainment for the reps in each quartile.)

This point-to-attainment correlation is so strong that even when reps have tried to game the system, they end up being stronger performers instead.

One of our big goals is to help sales managers scale the way they drive team performance. To help prepare for weekly coaching and 1-on-1s, we’re focusing on continually improving the tools to track and measure reps’ point performance in SetSail. The first wave of enhancement focuses on two areas.

Tracking How Teams Are Performing In SetSail

We’ve enhanced the abilities managers have to see how their team’s point performance is tracking each week in SetSail and identify reps who need more attention.