Sales Force Management:
How to Do it Well?

Focus on Marketing Program - Sales Training

Effective sales force management is key to successful sales. Create sales training jobs and/or responsibilities to build strong marketing program sales training. And offer your sales group a good sales commission plan as an incentive to close sales.

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To reach your sales goals focus your management efforts on sales force management.

All businesses need to sell to stay in business and to enjoy business growth.

More for small business sales techniques and strategies include sales outsourcing, sales planning, sales tracking, sales reporting and sales managing.

Develop your human resources group to provide training; create sales training jobs or train staff to deliver marketing program sales training.

Successfully focusing on sales force management will help your business focus on increasing sales, adding new customers and building a stronger relationship with existing customers.

Sales Force Management

This sales management process needs to be constantly evolving and continuously improving.

1. Link the sales plan to the small business plan.

   And communicate the link to your sales force. For example, if the sales plan is to increase sales of a specific product by 8 per cent, then explain to your sales group how that increase impacts the planned-for profitability, the planned-for geographic expansion, the planned-for new equipment investment, and more.

2. Plan and assign the territories or accounts based on market segmentation and target marketing.

   This includes segmenting existing customers, high value customers, high volume customers, and so on.

3. Define what type of sales people you have employed: are they hunters or gatherers?

   Recruiting employees with the 'right' sales skills and behaviors is very important.

   The 'hunters' like to prospect and find new customers and/or new opportunities with existing customers. The 'gatherers' like to develop long-term relationships and provide service to existing accounts. Ideally, you would like to have a mix of both in your sales force.

Management of the Two Types of Sales Personalities Requires Different Strategies:

1. For hunters, set stretch goals and measurable targets (for example, 20 cold calls per week, 5 new accounts a month, $100,000 in new business annually) and pay out some of the employee compensation package in sales commissions (the compensation could be salary and commission; or salary only; or build a sales commission plan that provides commission tiers; or a commission only plan).
2. For gatherers, set service goals to have them provide increasing levels of customer satisfaction, measurable good customer service and relationship building (which can be measured through customer surveys and sales volume).

A hunter typically is energetic; self-confident; low ego (can take rejection – a "no" – without taking it personally); a great communicator; charismatic and entertaining (often is a good story teller); and results-driven (strong on closing).

A gatherer is genuinely interested in people; also a good communicator but on a deeper, almost personal, level; is interested in developing strong relationships; will have a great memory (or a good system) for birthdays, important events, history, and more; well organized and detail oriented (needs this trait to be able to improve service processes); wants the immediate sale but is more interested in the long term sales.

Both types of sales people need to be good listeners. And the reality is that both types will also have some elements of the other personality in their psyche.

Managing Your Sales Force Effectively

Once you've got the team you feel is necessary to help you sell, it's your responsibility to manage your sales force and get the most out of them.

Sales force management challenges will grow as your business grows - increasing sales volume; an increasing number of customers; growing geographical market reach; an increasing number of products or services – these are just a few of the challenges that your business will face.

Your marketing plan will change and evolve over time; your marketing program sales training also needs to be upgraded or changed over time.

Make sure that you develop systems (or purchase software systems), to measure business performance and help planning, tracking, analyzing, reporting and managing your sales force.

As the small business owner, and/or the sales manager, you need to understand how to effectively manage your sales force. You need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each of your sales people; and then you need to capitalize on the strengths and minimize or eliminate the weaknesses.

Matching your sales people to the right customer mix is important to their, and your, success.

Your job is to train and motivate your sales staff. If you are an experienced sales person, make sure you step out of the way for your sales people – coach them, don’t do it for them. Use your human resources program to develop sales training jobs, or to ensure that performance evaluations focus on improving sales people, and sales results. And build sales commission plans to provide sales performance incentives.

Set targets and then, when they are met or exceeded, make sure that you recognize exceptional performance and exceptional sales results. Find a way to communicate that recognition, not only to the employee but also throughout the company.

The success of your business rests on the success of your sales force management skills. Do it right.

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