For most of you out there it goes without saying, metrics matter. They’re essential for benchmarking the success of any team whether it be marketing, customer success, or sales and business development. They provide the insight managers need to make the types of decisions that can make or break a fiscal quarter, even a company. They are quite simply invaluable.

Getting your Business Development team on board with what metrics they will be held accountable for without making it terrifying can be a difficult task. With these types of positions often being filled by recent graduates just beginning their careers, the prospect of being held to certain metrics and quotas can be a bit of a shell shock. It can be uncomfortable, intimidating, and if not properly managed can be detrimental to their success.

Getting your Business Development team to love metrics is as essential to their success as it is yours as a sales leader. Here are a few ways to get your Business Development team loving metrics:

Teach Your Team Why the Metrics are Achievable

If you’re telling your Business Development team they need to make 70 calls and send 125 emails a day or generate 15 new business opportunities a month, make sure you tell them why. Sit down with your team members and teach them why these are their expectations.

Help them to understand that on average it takes 70 calls and 125 emails a day to make the connections they need to schedule the volume of meetings required to open 15 opportunities in a month. Show them the how you got to this number. It is a teaching moment for why certain standards are set and allows them to see that the goals set for them are achievable. They want to be successful, this goes a long way to showing them how they can be.

Always Tie the Metrics Back to Earnings

So now you’ve taught the team how the metrics help them reach their goals. Great. However the endgame isn’t always clear when you’re first starting out. For Business Development, as for any sales position, the end game is always hitting and exceeding your OTE. Your Business Development team might not be as accustomed as you think to having a part of their income be variable. Don’t neglect this.

Make sure your Business Development Representatives see everyday the metrics that will effect their earnings. Whether it be meetings booked, meetings completed or opportunities opened and make sure it’s visible to them. Make sure they can see that they’re hitting their daily volume expectations. This will keep them excited as they meet and exceed metrics that they will be payed on and helps to create healthy competition on your team. It’s essential!

Make a Business Development Dashboard

SalesForce makes this very easy with only a few simple reports being needed to create an effective dashboard for you team to measure themselves on. These types of dashboards will not only help to keep your team honest in terms of activity but will promote competition within. I recommend putting these metrics up for your team to see:

• Daily numbers for meetings booked, calls completed, calls connected and emails sent
• Weekly numbers for meetings booked and completed, calls completed, calls connected and emails sent
• Monthly numbers for meetings booked, completed and opportunities opened

These numbers go a long way in keeping your team honest and competitive. It allows them to see how the people around them are performing and will push everyone to achieve greater numbers. The numbers in you CRM should be just as important to your Business Development team as it is to their managers. If there is a member of your team that isn’t motivated by this, I suggest letting them go. They don’t have the mentality it will take to be successful in a sales role.

Show Them that Metrics Lead to Promotions

Anyone who is or was a Business Development Representative knows this is not a position you want to be in for years. You’ll burn out. It’s a great position to get your foot in the door and learn the ropes, but in most cases it’s not a lifetime career. Make sure your team knows that their metrics will lead to promotions. If you don’t have a metrics-based promotion plan, get one.

Let your team know that these metrics in place are not just to get them to short-term earnings. A metrics based promotion plan keeps them thinking about the bigger picture. It keeps them motivated to continue excelling because there is a clear benefit for them to do so, other than keeping their job of course. Millennials want fast career growth, it’s a fact. Metrics driven promotions don’t come with a time-served requirement, they come with built-in motivation for you team to push themselves month in and month out.

At the end of the day as a sales leader you should never forget: your Business Development Representatives love metrics…they just might need someone to tell them why.