Josh Allen is a sales leadership veteran. From inside sales rep to manager to EMEA sales director to current VP of Sales at LogMeIn, Josh has a track record of leading successful teams. We recently sat down to discuss how he thinks about and measures KPIs for his sales reps.

(Note: LogMeIn is a remote access software/SaaS company with a higher-volume, lower-ASP model.)

Josh and LogMeIn have departed from traditional (one-size-fits-all) sales KPIs in favor of customized metrics for each and every sales rep.

"We've tried cookie cutter KPIs – for example, everybody has to make 60 dials a day, create 5 new opportunities a week, etc.  But when you apply KPIs broadly across different sales teams, and try to graph it, you're going to have people who are on the high end and the low end. And very few people who are actually meeting the target."

Rather than apply uniform metrics, they decided to build a formula that would be as customized as possible to the individual sales rep. Using historical sales performance, they isolate that specific individual’s metrics.

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It’s a tough hiring market -- especially for SDR and AE roles. In some locations (San Francisco, New York, and Boston), it has become almost impossible.

I know from speaking with Sales Leaders (and from our research) that companies are being forced to hire younger and less experienced reps. It seems “straight out of college” has become the new “1-2 years of experience” and that “minimum of 1 year of selling” has replaced “3+ years in a sales capacity.”

By this point, if you don’t have a healthy number of “Millennials” on your team, you’re in the minority. Despite the stereotypes (social media-obsessed, marriage-delaying, selfie-addicts), Millennials actually stay longer with their employers than the previous generation.

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Like many of you, I’m finally recovering from the one-two punch of Dreamforce ’15 and the end of Q3.  

Now that my head is above water, I want to highlight one Dreamforce product launch you might have missed: SalesforceIQ for Sales Cloud. I’ve been playing with the app for a few weeks and am totally blown away.

What it is

SalesforceIQ for Sales Cloud is both a mobile email client (iOS and Android devices) and a Chrome browser extension.  The product marketing promises:  sell smarter right from inbox. They aren’t kidding. It is part email open tracker, part cloud calendar scheduler, part Salesforce integration, and part automated assistant.

How it works

I shot a quick video walk-thru to give you a feel for the app.

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