Sales management requires a balancing act between what is best to motivate your sales force, and what it takes to make profit for the company. You want to reward your top performers while giving the bottom of your group the tools they need to improve and succeed. The financial fate of the company is in the hands of the sales group, and effective sales management is necessary to help a company survive.
Pay
According to AllBusiness.com, it can be frustrating for top performers to work hard and then not see financial results from their hard work. A balanced pay plan for a sales organization offers a small base salary to help the sales people pay their bills, and then the opportunity to see financial reward in the form of an incentive or commission check when their hard work turns into revenue for the company. Good sales people will understand the concept behind a low-base pay, but if it is not accompanied by a sizable commission program then it will be very difficult to keep talented salespeople working for your company.
Accountability
Sales management is about making sure your salespeople are accountable for their results. Most sales organizations have that one salesperson who closes deals without seeming to do a lot of work. But as a sales manager you understand the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to close those deals. Regular monitoring reports such as call reports, revenue reports and sales forecasts help to keep all your salespeople accountable for what they do. When you establish metric numbers for performance, you can then pinpoint why a particular person may not be producing as much as they should. Sales is a numbers game, and in order to play you need to make sure you are always keeping track of the right numbers. In a paper published by Kutztown University, Dan Goldberg suggests weekly sales meetings to make each person in the group accountable for their performance.
Review
As a sales manager you can be very effective as a sales coach. When you are coaching your salespeople you are reviewing techniques with them every week, and going over sales basics to make sure that everyone always has their fundamentals in order. When you make the idea of sales management interactive with review and training, it gives your sales force a feeling that you are involved in their success.
Tags: hard work, your salespeople, accountable their, effective sales, make sure, sales force