By

Simon Hazeldine

Building and maintaining a high-performance sales team isn’t just about hiring top talent and hoping they succeed. It requires a structured and disciplined approach to performance management. If you want to create a sales team that consistently delivers results, you need to ensure that the five critical elements of the Performance Pentagram are firmly in place.

The Performance Pentagram provides a proven framework to optimise the effectiveness of your salespeople and ensure they are focused, motivated, and delivering the best possible results. If you neglect any of these five key areas, you risk underperformance, disengagement, and a decline in sales revenue.

1. Direction & Contribution

The first step to maximising performance is ensuring that every salesperson understands the broader direction of the organisation and how they contribute to its success. Research from sources such as the Harvard Business Review highlights that employees who clearly understand their role in the company’s mission are significantly more engaged and productive .

Practical Actions:

• Communicate the company’s vision, mission, and strategic objectives regularly.
• Help salespeople connect their daily activities to the bigger picture.
• Reinforce the impact of their work by sharing success stories and customer testimonials.

When salespeople understand why their role matters, they are far more likely to be motivated and driven to achieve exceptional results.

2. Goals & Targets

Psychological research consistently shows that setting clear goals leads to higher performance. Individuals with specific and challenging goals outperform those with vague or no goals.

Practical Actions:

• Set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) for each salesperson.
• Align individual targets with overall business objectives.
• Ensure salespeople have both activity goals (e.g., number of calls, meetings, proposals) and outcome goals (e.g., revenue, conversions, new customer acquisition).
• Track progress regularly and adjust targets based on real-time sales performance data.

Sales managers must also ensure that targets are both challenging and achievable to keep motivation high while avoiding burnout.

3. Standards & Expectations

For salespeople to perform at a high level, they must have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. Without clearly defined standards, they may develop their own inconsistent or ineffective approaches.

Practical Actions:

• Define key performance indicators (KPIs) for every role.
• Ensure sales processes and best practices are documented and communicated.
• Provide examples of what good looks like by sharing case studies of top performers.
• Set behavioural standards (e.g., responsiveness to clients, professionalism in communication, adherence to CRM usage).

When expectations are crystal clear, salespeople can measure themselves against the benchmarks set and strive for continuous improvement.

4. Regular Feedback

Frequent and constructive feedback is one of the most powerful drivers of performance improvement. Studies show that employees who receive regular feedback are more engaged, confident, and productive (source).

Practical Actions:

• Implement weekly or bi-weekly one-to-one coaching sessions.
• Balance positive reinforcement (what they are doing well) with constructive feedback (areas for improvement).
• Use data-driven feedback rather than vague, subjective comments.
• Encourage self-reflection by asking questions like: “What do you think went well in that sales call? What would you do differently next time?”

Great sales managers understand that feedback is a continuous process, not an annual event. If you wait for quarterly or annual reviews to provide feedback, you’re missing countless opportunities to coach and develop your team.

5. Differentiate Based on Performance

Not all salespeople perform at the same level, and how you manage high performers vs. underperformers must be different. If you treat everyone the same, you risk demotivating your best salespeople while enabling poor performance to persist.

Practical Actions:

• Recognise and reward high performers with incentives, promotions, or exclusive training opportunities.
• Provide additional support and coaching for underperformers.
• If a salesperson consistently underperforms despite coaching, consider a performance improvement plan (PIP).
• Be willing to make difficult decisions when necessary; tolerating low performance can damage team morale.

Sales teams thrive when they see that hard work and results are rewarded, while complacency and poor performance are addressed.

Conclusion

Maximising your sales team’s performance isn’t about quick fixes or one-off motivational talks. It requires consistent execution of the five key elements of the Performance Pentagram. By ensuring your salespeople have clear direction, well-defined goals, high standards, regular feedback, and differentiated management, you set them up for sustained success.

Key Takeaways:

• Ensure every salesperson knows the company’s mission and their role in achieving it.
• Set clear, challenging goals and measure progress consistently.
• Define standards and expectations to remove ambiguity.
• Provide frequent feedback to reinforce good behaviours and address gaps.
• Recognise and reward top performers while proactively coaching underperformers.

If you consistently apply these principles, you will build a sales team that is motivated, high-performing, and consistently delivers results.

For more insights on sales performance and leadership, check out more ideas and insight from HubSpot, and the in-depth “Drivers of Sales Performance: A Contemporary Meta-Analysis”

Simon Hazeldine’s book ““How to Lead Your Sales Team – Virtually and In-Person” is available exclusively from Bookboon.

Now, go out there and drive your sales team forward!

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About the author

Simon Hazeldine works internationally as a revenue growth and sales performance speaker, consultant, and coach. He empowers his clients to get more sales, more often with more margin.

He has spoken in over thirty countries and his client list includes some of the world’s largest and most successful companies.

Simon has a master’s degree in psychology, is the bestselling author of ten books that have been endorsed by a host of business leaders including multi-billionaire business legend Michael Dell and is co-founder of leading sales podcast “The Sales Chat Show”.

He is the creator of the neuroscience based “Brain Friendly Selling”® methodology.

Simon Hazeldine’s books:

• Neuro-Sell: How Neuroscience Can Power Your Sales Success
• Bare Knuckle Selling
• Bare Knuckle Negotiating
• Bare Knuckle Customer Service
• The Inner Winner
• How To Lead Your Sales Team – Virtually and in Person
• Virtual Selling Success
• How To Manage Your People’s Performance
• How To Create Effective Employee Development Plans
• Virtual Negotiation Success