Gartner Blog Network

Dave Egloff
Senior Director
1 years at Gartner
20 years IT Industry

Dave Egloff is a Senior Director, Analyst in the Gartner for Sales Leaders practice. His current work focuses on key initiatives in sales strategy, sales operations and sales compensation. Read Full Bio

Sales Productivity Improves Decision Making

by Dave Egloff  |  June 26, 2019

In my last blog post, I talked about the intricacies in calculating sales productivity in a complex sales environment.  I ended that post with this statement, “Despite being nuanced, creating a good sales productivity metric is worth the effort.” Calculating sales productivity is indeed beneficial and allows sales leaders to improve decision making and assess […]

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Complexity of Sales Productivity

by Dave Egloff  |  June 10, 2019

Seller productivity is a popular metric for many sales leaders. Simply stated, sales productivity can equal the revenue generated by the seller’s book of business.  However, as sales organizations evolve and sales roles expand, productivity metrics become complicated. Here are a few wrinkles that may pose a challenge: Team-based Selling How do you measure seller […]

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Measuring Seller Performance – Absolutely or Relatively

by Dave Egloff  |  May 29, 2019

Sales leaders examine seller performance in distinct ways.  Two common methods include using either an absolute or relative approach. Absolute Sales Performance Absolute sales performance is the simplest approach where objectively more is better.  Comparing two sellers, the better performer is the one that produces more revenue.  The key assumption is that both sellers had […]

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Coaching Sellers Effectively and Objectively

by Dave Egloff  |  May 13, 2019

There is an old proverb that is commonly used in the corporate world – “If you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together.” I believe there is a corollary to sales managers as they approach coaching – “If you want to close a deal, coach to the opportunity.  […]

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The Evolution of Sales Operations

by Dave Egloff  |  April 28, 2019

The sales operations function is on a transformative journey.  In working with many leaders, it’s clear that any sales operations organization can be plotted along a maturity continuum. My colleague and fellow Gartner for Sales Leaders analyst, Steve Herz, has identified this continuum as consisting of three main phases: Commodity – excellence means fast and […]

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Attracting and retaining top sales talent

by Dave Egloff  |  April 15, 2019

There is a common saying — leaders need to attract and retain top talent.  Clearly, this is a great practice.  However, when the labor market is saturated and the bid for talent is hyper-competitive, attracting and retaining talent becomes a strategic imperative. While all leaders are facing similar challenges, sales leaders are forced to face […]

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Contrasting customer segmentation and customer tiering

by Dave Egloff  |  March 28, 2019

Many sales leaders describe their customer segmentation strategy by discussing how larger customers get more resources.  While this is a viable approach, it’s more akin to customer tiering as opposed to segmentation.  Segmentation and tiering have commonalities but should be seen as distinct strategies. Customer segmentation Segmentation is the process of creating homogeneous customer groupings.  […]

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The Sales Strategy and Design Journey

by Dave Egloff  |  March 12, 2019

Chief Sales Officers have more access and transparency to sales pipeline, seller performance, and customer data than ever before.  This isn’t a new phenomenon.  It’s the result of better systems, data mindfulness and intellectual curiosity. While some organizations have made more progress than others, all are on this journey to leverage the data collected.  For […]

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Sales compensation governance does not need to be painful

by Dave Egloff  |  February 15, 2019

Recently, Gartner did a study and found that of the sales leaders identifying sales compensation as one of their higher priorities, 32% said plan effectiveness was their top concern.  No surprise here. The revelation was that 21% of these sales leaders said that improving sales compensation governance was their biggest concern.  In fact, this was […]

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Improving sales communications

by Dave Egloff  |  February 6, 2019

In a recent Gartner survey of 46 sales executives, “improving the effectiveness of sales communications” ranked as the most common response to what was in their top 3 priorities. This is an understandable challenge as all professionals contend with too much “noise” in the workplace.  It is so easy to communicate to the masses that […]

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