How to evaluate the performance of your gallery team

01Defining indicators suited to the gallery profession

The most common mistake is importing, without adaptation, performance indicators used in retail or service industries. The number of sales completed, revenue generated per employee or visitor-to-buyer conversion rate are indicators that, taken in isolation, produce a distorted picture of each team member's contribution. A staff member who spent six months building a relationship with a museum curator, resulting in the inclusion of a gallery artist in an institutional exhibition, created considerable value that does not translate immediately into revenue but will enhance the artist's standing and the gallery's reputation for years.

Galleries that have implemented relevant evaluation systems generally combine several indicator families. The first concerns direct commercial activity: number of contacts established with collectors, appointments organised, sales concluded and cumulative amounts. Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, which employs substantial teams across its spaces in Paris, Salzburg, London and Seoul, has developed rigorous tracking of its staff's commercial activity that integrates the notion of long sales cycles, typical of the high-end contemporary art market.

The second family of indicators concerns relational quality. This involves evaluating the staff member's ability to develop and maintain a collector portfolio, to retain existing clients and to generate referrals. Galerie Lelong & Co., which has always attached particular importance to long-term collector relationships, evaluates its staff on their capacity to accompany collectors over time, which presupposes a deep knowledge of each collection and attention to the collector's life events beyond the transaction.

The third family concerns contribution to gallery operations: quality of administrative management, reliability in shipment and delivery follow-up, rigour in updating the client database, participation in fair and exhibition preparation. These tasks, less visible than sales, are essential to the gallery's smooth functioning and deserve recognition within the evaluation system.

02The individual review: a ritual to structure

Performance evaluation necessarily involves regular individual meetings between the dealer and each team member. The frequency of these meetings depends on gallery size and activity rhythm, but one in-depth review per quarter constitutes a reasonable minimum. Galerie Perrotin, which employs several dozen people across its spaces in Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai and Los Angeles, has formalised an annual review process combining staff self-evaluation, direct manager assessment and objective-setting for the following period.

The review must be prepared by both parties. The team member should present a summary of their activity over the period, supported by factual elements: contacts made, sales concluded, exhibitions prepared, fairs attended, institutional relationships developed. The dealer should have assembled observations and feedback, covering both positive points and identified difficulties.

Galerie Kamel Mennour, which has experienced rapid growth since its founding in 1999, conducts reviews that address both the past period's results and the staff member's aspirations. This forward-looking dimension is essential: a team member who feels heard in their professional ambitions is more engaged than one who merely receives a verdict on past performance.

03Evaluating relational and cultural competences

In an art gallery, relational and cultural competences count as much as commercial skills. A team member who welcomes visitors warmly and knowledgeably, who adapts their discourse to both novice and experienced collectors, who maintains cordial relations with gallery artists and who represents the gallery with distinction at fairs and openings, possesses qualities of considerable value that are difficult to quantify.

Evaluating these competences relies largely on the dealer's direct observation and on feedback from artists, collectors and institutional partners. Galerie Templon, founded by Daniel Templon in 1966, has always been attentive to reception quality in its spaces, considering that a visitor's first impression often determines the trajectory of the relationship. Feedback from artists regarding their experience with the gallery team also constitutes a valuable indicator: an artist who feels well supported by the team is one who remains loyal to the gallery.

Cultural competence deserves specific evaluation. A gallery staff member should maintain current knowledge of the contemporary art scene, follow exhibitions at institutions and peer galleries, read the specialist press and artists' publications. Galerie Marian Goodman, renowned for the intellectual rigour of its programme, expects solid and constantly enriched artistic culture from its staff. This competence is not innate and deserves support from the gallery, which can encourage exhibition visits, fund training courses and organise knowledge-sharing sessions within the team.

04Variable remuneration: a tool to handle with care

The question of variable remuneration is sensitive in the gallery world. Some galleries practise a commission system on sales; others prefer a fixed salary supplemented by an annual bonus based on the gallery's overall results. Each model presents advantages and drawbacks that the dealer must weigh according to the gallery's culture and team composition.

Individual sales commissions have the merit of clarity and direct motivation, but they carry risks in the gallery context. They can encourage harmful internal competition, lead staff to favour quick sales over long-term relationship building, and create tensions when a sale results from the collective effort of several people. David Zwirner gallery, long cited for the quality of its sales team, has adopted a model combining a competitive salary with collective bonuses linked to the gallery's overall results, thereby encouraging cooperation among staff.

The collective bonus, indexed to the gallery's overall results, has the advantage of uniting the team around shared objectives and avoiding individualistic behaviour. However, it can create a sense of unfairness among the highest-performing staff who feel their contribution is insufficiently recognised. A hybrid system combining a collective bonus with an individual component linked to specific objectives generally offers the best balance.

05Evaluation as a retention tool

In a job market where qualified contemporary art profiles are scarce, performance evaluation should be conceived as a retention tool as much as a management instrument. A team member who benefits from regular reviews, who receives constructive feedback on their work, whose competences are recognised and whose aspirations are taken into account, is one who will stay longer than a colleague left in uncertainty about their standing.

Galerie Almine Rech, which has developed operations across Paris, Brussels, London, New York and Shanghai, has established a progression pathway allowing staff to advance within the structure according to their growing competences. This visibility regarding career prospects is a powerful retention factor in a sector where salaries are often lower than in other industries at comparable qualification levels.

Evaluation should also identify training needs. A team member whose digital skills are insufficient to manage the gallery's tools, or whose English limits interactions with international collectors, deserves support rather than sanction. The gallery that invests in staff training reaps the benefits in the form of a more competent and more engaged team.

06Adapting evaluation to gallery size

Small galleries, where the dealer works with one or two staff members, cannot implement the same evaluation processes as large international galleries. Nevertheless, daily proximity does not exempt from formalised evaluation. The dealer who works closely with a small team tends to assume everyone knows where they stand, that things are naturally discussed on a daily basis and that a formal review would be superfluous. This impression is often misleading: unspoken issues accumulate, frustrations go unexpressed and misunderstandings crystallise.

Even in a two-person gallery, a structured bi-annual review, prepared by both parties, enables issues to be addressed clearly and crises to be prevented. Galerie Nathalie Obadia, before the growth that led to openings in Paris and Brussels, operated for years with a small team whose work the founder always evaluated with method and care.

Artedusa partner galleries have an additional tool for evaluating team performance: the platform's analytics enable measurement of online collector engagement, enquiry volume, response rates and the quality of follow-up on contacts generated through the platform. These digital indicators, combined with traditional ones, offer a more complete view of team performance and each staff member's contribution to the gallery's online visibility.