Elements Of A Successful Sales Performance Management System

The components of a successful sales performance management system include first of all having well defined revenue plans and revenue and margin objectives. Often times, this includes having bookings objectives for your individual sales people. Having well defined sales territories relating to those targets. And of course, having a strong, well documented plan, in terms of who your target markets and customers are within your territories.

In addition to having a revenue plan, other components of the sales performance management system include a job description that is expectation based where the outcomes are clearly defined are very important in terms of overall requirements for success in the job.

The next component of successful sales performance management system is actually having individual revenue margin and booking objectives for each of your people. Typically, this is done an annualize basis with your people going through a planning cycle once you've defined your overall company's revenue plans. You should put together targets, annual revenue and bookings goals for each of your salespeople that are tied to that overall revenue plan. And often times you'll be doing a measuring and monitoring of performance relative to those actual revenue goals systematically on a monthly or quarterly basis in addition to that.

The next element of a successful sales performance management system is having an annual territory plan that your salespeople are working towards. This territory plan should be developed in concert with sales management in your sales people and it should list not only your major objects but also key accounts that you're targeting, the strategies to get into those accounts, should probably have a section about both new business development as well as account maintenance or account management and also have a section related to actual channel management strategies that your sales people are going to be carrying out. This is a once page document that can be put together in a template and passed out to your sales people and used as a tool for them to conduct annual sales planning.

Again, having a plan in place allows you to use that plan as a tool for measuring and monitoring performance against that plan and having ongoing discussions with your sales people related to how they're progressing against the objectives and the overall plan that they've set at the outset of the year.

The next element of a successful sales performance management system has nothing to do with actual goals objectives or plans, but everything to do with sales management's role in working with individuals on the sales team. This is the most critical element. Sales people are only as good as they are being managed by sales management. A lot of companies expect sales people to be left at their own devices, but just like any other team, sales people need to be managed and the foundation for that, of course, is having somebody in place in your sales management function who is willing to work closely with their people.

The role of sales management in developing and using a sales performance management system is probably most principally based upon the notion of sales management working closely with sales team members on an on going basis and establishing a relationship of trust, confidence, and mentorship. And that relationship built between sales management and its team is fundamental to empowering sales people to be successful in their jobs.

The role of sales management is to track sales activity and measure and monitor performance and to coach sales people to success. Tracking activity can be done very easily when your company has a successful CRM implementation. We use salesforce.com to develop customized dashboards that give management a quick snapshot of each of their sales people's activity in terms of amount of prospecting, amount of actual account qualification and actually being able to measure and track the activity of the sales people as it relates to moving deals through the actual sales process towards close.

Measuring and monitoring performance isn't just about really tracking activity but in a deeper sense, getting behind the activity to understand what it is that's working and what's not working with each sales person's territory. A good example of that is working with accounts. Is the sales person doing a good job of mapping out an actual customer prospect, in terms of people, decision makers, influencers and decision making processa and then working hard in order to touch all the bases to develop and advance the sale with all of the different constituents inside a specific account. This is where sales management needs to work deeply to measure and monitor sales performance and this is not a trivial task. It requires active engagement from sales management in order to do this.

Another foundation of good sales management, of course, is coaching your people to success. There is all sorts of schools of thoughts out there about how to best work with people but in this day and age, which is one of empowerment, people want to feel like they're involved in the decision making processes of their job. They want to feel like their opinion is heard by management. So a more enlightened approach to coaching your people today in today's management environment is really working with sales people to help them to understand and reach their own conclusions about how they can improve their sales performance.

Coaching requires active engagement which requires in turn, time spent seriously involved in a sales person's day to day, week to week routine activities. There's a number of different ways to do this, of course. The most effective way is spending one on one time with your sales people in the field actually visiting accounts, strategizing them, talking about and preparing for sales calls, going on those sales calls and then debriefing after those sales calls to talk about what happened, what was learned and how could the sales call have been improved. Most sales people learn by doing, and so the active coaching is the art of getting out with your people into the field and then actually working with them to help them to understand how they can enhance their sales performance and their sales technique.

Another element, in addition to regular sales visits, is frequent phone contact with your sales people just to check in with them to find out how things are going, and frequent informal discussions with sales people to just show them that you care and also giving them feedback on problems and challenges that they are facing on specific accounts as they raise those issues to you. Knowing which accounts your sales people are working on is the foundation for asking them questions on a regular basis about how things are going on those accounts and showing your sales people that you are actually engaged with them in an active relationship and are interested in helping them to find ways to win. When your sales people win, your company wins.

Yet another element is holding regular sales meetings. Some companies only do this on a very infrequent basis and the sales meeting should be a primary component of your sales performance management system. By formalizing sales meetings and holding them on a regular basis, you're showing your sales team that you're creating an environment of accountability and information exchange. Sales meetings can be used for a number of purposes including information gathering, finding out how your sales team members are performing.

Providing training for your sales people which is very important. Providing ongoing sales training is a way to make sure that your sales people are always sharpening their saw and that you're giving them the latest tools in order to improve their sales performance. So typically, we work on sales technique training as well as product training and customer and market training as well. Other things to do in sales meetings include providing recognition incentives and rewards, taking time in your sales meetings to praise and celebrate the successes of your people is a great way of showing them that you really do care about their performance and you're willing to celebrate those success and give them recognition and rewards as appropriate for the successes that they have. So holding sales meetings is an important part of making sure that you have a motivated, high performance sales team that's working together and is accountable for its activities.

The more that sales people understand that they are accountable for producing themselves and are held accountable through these different vehicles that we've talked about the better your sales performance is going to be from your people. So building and deploying a successful sales performance management system is something that a company cannot live without and needs to be taken very seriously.

Of course the best sales performance system is only as good as the people who are running it and when it comes right down to it, running a high performance sales team is all about good leadership. What is good leadership? That's not the subject that I want to cover here but I certainly do want to say this: Leadership is about passion, about vision, about connectedness, about motivating people, about finding out what it is that unlocks the door to people's special performance and help8ing them to realize, open that door and go there. So in some way, building a successful sales performance management system is a key to accelerating your company's sales and as your organization continues to grow, it becomes more important in order to achieve high performance scalability and repeatability in your processes.

Cube Management helps companies accelerate their sales, by providing the Sales & Marketing talent they need to grow their business. Cube is a leading recruiting and consulting partner to mid-market and emerging growth companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. We work across the spectrum of Sales, Marketing and Business Development, providing holistic solutions that drive revenue and profit success. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process and People, to produce great results. Download the Cube Management Recruiting Guide and the Cube Management Inside Sales Guide.

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