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Inspiring Your Sales Force

This article covers the key issues in the successful management of salespeople, including specific strategies to improve sales force productivity. You'll also find books, seminars, and trade shows related to sales management.

CRITICAL ISSUES

Today's turbulent economy has spurred a number of changes that affect the ways that sales managers manage, train, and motivate their sales forces.

Perhaps the most important trend is the tension created by corporate downsizing and the increasing need of customers for stronger relationships with suppliers. Thus, while sales managers must contain costs, they must also increase the sales force's ability to cultivate relationships and gather strategic information.

Sales training budgets are being slashed, too, reducing the ability of sales managers to communicate goals, product benefits, strategies, and resources.

Meanwhile, sales cycles are decreasing dramatically. Many companies are adopting time-to-market as a key measurement of success, and this begs shorter order response times and faster customer service. Historically, sales forces didn't concern themselves with such issues. While sales force automation helps to solve part of the problem, truncated sales cycles continue to intensify the pressure on sales managers.

Customers are also demanding more personal, quality-packed service from companies and salespeople. Sales managers can no longer afford to have salespeople serve merely as order-takers. They need to use them as tools to learn customer needs and gather intelligence on competitors. Such value-oriented relationships are difficult to foster, if severe budgetary restraints are applied by corporate financial officers who often don't understand the full impact of cutting sales force size and resources.

As markets shift, sales managers find themselves managing several channels of delivery. Salespeople have to become jacks of many trades. Experts agree that the company of tomorrow will deal with between six and ten channels of distribution and that sales managers will be responsible for having them work together effectively.

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ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS

Effective sales managers will be able to adapt to the changing marketplace and manage and motivate their troops. The two most important traits such managers will have are:

1. Strong leadership. Successful sales managers are "change managers" able to take the largest possible percentage of their existing work force and provide them with the education, motivation, and supervision to do new things in new ways.
   
   
2. Thorough marketplace knowledge. The best sales managers stay on top of their markets. They upgrade their knowledge by attending trade shows and seminars and studying educational tapes and books (see Self-Study/Courses and Books). They improve their grasp of people skills, marketing, technology, management, networking, and presentations.

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STRATEGIES THAT WORK

Strategy-minded sales managers are constantly on the attack, addressing customer problems, sales training, and motivational concerns. Here are the key elements of successful sales management:

1. Vision. The give-me-a-purchase-order method of selling has been consigned to history. Sales managers must lead by identifying ways to create value for their customers. "Need selling" is the rule in today's marketplace.
   
   
   Identify competitors' advantages and outline your company's strengths and weaknesses in dealing with customers. This will enable you to form a vision based on reality. Examine your company's role in the customer's buying cycle. In face-to-face interviews, learn how you might work with customers as a partner and then pass the message along to your sales force. Develop value-added services and programs based on the information.
   
   
2. A strategic sales plan. Leaders who understand the big picture must be able to specify the best sales opportunities and how the sales force will go after them.
   
   A strategic plan should include a review of the competencies required of salespeople to execute the plan. For example, a sales manager may develop a list of 20 traits and skills salespeople must possess, including personality factors, interpersonal skills, industry expertise, accounting skills.
   
   Effective managers can identify those competencies that support their plan. For example, a company might focus on consultative selling, first getting customers to see the benefits of an initial study and later providing them with ideas to solve problems. The value-added tools might include a proprietary database to be used as a diagnostic tool.
   
   Before you can create a strategic plan, you need to know how customers want to work with your company. Will they rely on you simply as a supplier, or do they want you to work with them on strategic development? Spell out the skills that salespeople must have to fulfill the needs requested by customers.
   No strategic plan should be drafted without the participation of the sales force. Present your sales plan to customers and then fine tune it. Your salespeople will react much more readily to an approach that has already proven successful in the field.
   
   
3. Base your training strategy on specific needs. Once you have a strategy, you have to make sure everybody in your sales operation buys into it. Training should spell out paths of success for each individual on the sales team.
   
   
4. Develop a relationship-oriented management style. In relationship-oriented training, top sales managers shift their focus from reviewing to planning. They put most of their effort into sitting down with people to help them plan crucial calls. According to industry studies, successful sales managers spend roughly three times as much time doing this as do their less successful counterparts. Studies of successful sales managers also point to a heavy emphasis on coaching, one-on-one time spent developing skills needed for strategic planning and selling.
   
   
5. Updated compensation plan. With more people sharing corporate accountability, sales managers need to measure and reward their sales force for their impact on profit, not gross sales. Leading-edge companies recognize that their salespeople can have a big impact on price, product mix, discounts, and transportation allowances.
   
   Many companies use new criteria that reinforce quality customer relationships. For example, they track customer satisfaction or number of contacts within an account. They base pay primarily on performance measures, eschewing gross sales and opting for sales contribution dollars and taking into consideration discounts, allowances, transportation, overhead, and gross profit dollars before advertising.
   
   Customer-retention has become another important measurement now that companies realize that keeping a customer is less expensive than hunting for a new one.
   
   Team-oriented compensation plans are also gaining momentum. Traditionally, the company rewarded the salesperson for closing the sale on his own. But today it's difficult for one person to close mega-dollar sales. Corporate consolidation means there are larger companies with fewer suppliers serving them. It takes a sales team to handle a big customer, including marketers, logistics people, merchandising people, and distributors.
   
   
6. Strong motivational skills. Sales managers must know how to stroke and stoke the drive and passion within each salesperson. Top managers understand that a sales force is made up of individuals. They also understand that money isn't always the key driver. Experts point out that the number one motivator for salespeople isn't money, but independence and recognition.
   
   
7. Understanding of empowerment. Empowerment is as much a corporate attitude as it is a process. Top managers are adopting an attitude that says, "I hire adults. I'll give them marching orders and strategies, and they then understand that they're going to work as professionals. I'll monitor the situation and give them help when they need it."
   
   
   Effective managers prefer that salespeople make most key decisions. Empowerment means setting precise parameters. For example, they advise salespeople that they know their customers as well as anyone, and only if certain types of decisions need to be made should they bring in the sales manager.
   Adopt an attitude of trust. Teach salespeople how to make the proper decisions. Set limits on such things as credits for taking product back or travel and entertainment. Spell out these limits in a printed guide that formally reinforces the limits of empowerment.
   
   
8. Targeted incentive programs. Formal incentive programs-group incentive trips, merchandise-catalogue awards, President's Clubs-remain popular. But sales managers will need to adapt such programs to answer business realities. Achievement awards must be based on what today's salespeople want, and goals must be those that are realistic.
   
   
   In addition, incentive programs need to focus not only on a salesperson's personal productivity, but on the contributions of all people and all channels involved in the total sales effort. Not only should programs cut across all channels of the company, they have to include more quality-oriented measures, such as time spent with customers.
   
   
   Group travel remains the most popular award for top performers, with individual-travel awards, gift certificates, and merchandise also high on the list. But leading-edge companies are tapping the power of nonfinancial incentives also, including plaques and clubs. Insightful sales managers realize that most successful people are motivated not only by trips and prizes but by the opportunity to become part of an inner circle. Many of today's sales programs feature winners who are consulted by senior company officials and who are playing a bigger role in corporate decision making.
   
   
   Define incentive program objectives, including the specific products and behaviors that are targeted. (See Article 3020, Premium Incentive/Strategies for Success.)
   
   
9. Know whom to promote. Ambitious salespeople often want to have the opportunity to move into management when they would probably do best staying in sales. If you are faced with such an individual pressing for advancement, be honest and express your concern. In the case of top performers, make sure they get recognition within the organization as well as an open-ended compensation program that enables them to earn even more if their sales increase. Make them mentors who help bring along juniors. Make sure that these salespeople feel valued for who they are so that they don't feel the continual need to improve their status.
   
   
10. Understand automation. If your company doesn't have a contact management software program for its salespeople, it's probably much less productive than it could be. Sales automation allows you to keep track of who your customers and prospects are, and makes it easy to communicate with them. These programs can automate letter-writing and faxing, generate sales reports, and pinpoint geographic or industry sales opportunities. They're easy to use. Start with a simple program such as Symantec's Act. Data kept in a simple contact-management program almost always can be exported to a more elaborate program later on.

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ASSOCIATIONS

Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI) is made up of sales and marketing professionals. The association offers members sales and marketing seminars, sales training, a graduate school of sales and marketing management, an annual convention, and a monthly newsletter. Nonmembers can order books and receive a free copy of the newsletter. Call 770-661-8500, 800-999-1414 or go to http://www.smei.org.

American Marketing Association serves marketing and research executives as well as sales, advertising, and promotion people. It provides research, conferences and publications, all with a marketing research slant. Call 312-542-9000; fax 312-542-9001 or go to http://www.ama.org. .

The American Society for Training and Development, the world's leading professional association in the field of workplace learning and performance, offers both telephone and online information services and sponsors the annual International Conference and Exposition. ASTD's monthly INFO-LINE ($119 for nonmembers) is a collection of articles summarizing how-to information on various topics; the sales training area includes such articles as "Training for Customer Service" and "How to Create Effective Sales Training." Call 703-683-8100, fax 703-683-8103 or go to http://www.astd.org/.

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TRADE SHOWS AND SEMINARS

For a list of Industry Events, go to #9510, Calendar of Industry Events.

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BOOKS

For other books, see articles 7030, Managing Middlemen, and 9500, Books and Online Services.

High Performance Sales Organizations provides strategies (including training and coaching) to revolutionize customer-supplier relationships. Available through Amazon.com, $27.50.

A Manager's Guide to Staff Incentives and Performance Improvement Techniques, by John G. Fisher, offers practical advice for managers on incentive methods such as cash and non-cash reward systems; incentive travel; events; recognition systems; and flexible benefits. 188 pp. Kogan Page Ltd., London, 1996.

The Spin Selling Fieldbook, by Neil Rackham, reports on the biggest research project ever carried out on the topic of selling. Based on 5,000 sales calls, the 12-year study assesses the skills successful salespeople need, and discusses what sales managers should look for when they accompany their salespeople on calls. $24.95. Available through Amazon.com, $19.96.

Grow to Be Great: Breaking the Downsizing Cycle, by Dwight Gertz, describes successful strategies to produce profitable growth in the tough business environment of the 1990s. $25. Available through Amazon.com, $20.

Sales Force Automation: Using the Latest Technology to Make Your Sales Force More Competitive, by George W. Colombo, offers practical advice for getting started and using the right system for your company in addition to detailing the specific benefits of automation. Many real-life examples are used to demonstrate the strategies. Available through Amazon.com, $27.95.

Dartnell Corp., located in Chicago, has training tools available to individuals in the sales and marketing industry that address the topics of selling techniques, sales management, customer service, leadership, motivation, self-development, relationships, success, and achievement. Call 800-621-5463 or click on http://www.dartnellcorp.com/.

PUBLISHING SERVICES

Incentive magazine features monthly articles covering motivation issues and case histories in both management and marketing. Stories cover companies that maximize performance by motivating their dealers to buy - and salespeople to sell - via programs that incorporate merchandise and travel awards, communication strategies, and promotion techniques. 12 issues. Free to qualified executives. Call 212-592-6263. Go to http://www.incentivemag.com.

Selling Power is written for sales managers and salespeople. It features interviews with top motivators and salespeople and articles on selling trends and tactics. It also has special sections on such topics as motivation, automation, and new product ideas. 9 issues. Call 540-752-7000. Get articles and find new products; search for resources and jobs; and chat in forums at the magazine's new Web site: http://www.sellingpower.com.

Sell!ng, formerly a magazine, is now a newsletter loaded with articles on sales tips and strategies, case studies, profiles, Q & A, and more. 12 issues. Call 800-360-5344.

Sales & Marketing Strategies & News is an eight-times-a-year tabloid with articles that cover successful companies, sales strategies, and sales tools. Sections focus on point-of-purchase materials, promotion and motivation, sales automation and presentations, and trade show marketing. 9 issues. Free to qualified executives. Call 815-963-4000. Go to http://www.salesandmarketingmag.com.

Sales & Marketing Management covers a range of issues for executives who manage the sales and marketing functions in their companies. Each monthly issue has case studies, columns, and an international report. Topics range from motivation to sales training to automation. SMM also publishes the Survey of Buying Power, which uses U.S. Census data to track consumer buying patterns by county and metro area. 12 issues. Call 800-821-6897. Go to http://www.salesandmarketing.com.

Training magazine covers productivity in American organizations with a focus on the role that training departments and programs play in achieving competitiveness and profitability. Articles cover presentation techniques, computer-based interactive learning, and leadership. 12 issues. Call 800-707-7749. Go to http://www.trainingmag.com.

Training & Development, a monthly magazine published by ASTD, covers the areas of workplace learning and performance improvement. Articles focus on topics related to sales and customer service training. 12 issues. Call 703-683-8100. Go to http://www.astd.org.

Potentials is edited for marketing, sales, advertising and sales promotion executives. The monthly tabloid publication covers new products and services for use as premiums, incentive awards, business gifts and incentive travel. Regular features cover performance and motivation and case studies. Free to qualified executives. Call 612-333-0471. Go to http://www.potentialsmag.com/.

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CONSULTANTS

sales management issues. (For a complete list of the types of suppliers active in sales management, see Article 7010, Sales Management Overview.)

Sibson & Company is a sales management consulting firm with offices in Chicago, IL, Princeton, NJ, Ann Arbor, MI, Los Angeles, CA, Raleigh-Durham, NC, and Toronto, Canada. Call 312-580-7770.

Mercer Management Consulting is a general and sales management consulting firm with offices in the US and international. Call 781-861-7580.

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FIND A SUPPLIER

To find a supplier, go to #9520, Supplier Finder.

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© 2004. Copyright Selling Communications, Inc. Reprinted with permission from Incentive Performance Center (Article No. 7020).

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