15.4 Management of the Sales Force

Issues Involved in Managing a Sales Force

A sales force can be the lifeblood of an organization’s revenue cycle, so it’s important that they are incentivized to produce new clients, maintain current clients, and generate revenue for the organization. Proper management of the sales force includes setting goals, motivating, incentivizing, supporting, and monitoring.

Typical issues specific to sales include motivating and challenging the sales force. A sales force is always under pressure to meet sales targets, often linked to revenue goals, so a manger needs to constantly be working with their sales team to keep them motivated and hit the targets.

Finding the right person for the job is an important role for a sales manager. Sales managers often look for recent college graduates to fill sales positions. In addition, sales managers may look for someone already experienced in sales and then train them for the specific industry and products. Whatever set of skills a company might be looking for, finding the right mix of professionals can be challenging.

Serving Existing Customers

Much of the work of a sales professional is around serving the existing customer. It is important to keep customers satisfied. Most organizations rely heavily on existing customers to provide good reviews, customer referrals, repeat purchases, and upsell of existing products. Sales professionals are expected to continue developing and building the relationship with existing customers to ensure they are satisfied. This can include checking on inventory, dealing with supply issues, and educating on product application. Objectives may include how often the sales professional is expected to keep in contact with the existing customer.

Developing New Customers

Growth is a key driver of most organizations, and growth comes through new sales to existing customers and also through sales to new customers. A sales force objective of obtaining a certain number of new customers is common. The sales force must have a lead pipeline of prospective customers they are constantly working to turn into customers.

Increasing Market Share and Profit

Additional methods for companies to grow include obtaining more market share as well as more profitable sales. When there are sales objectives for market share, they usually focus on an increase in the proportion of the firm’s sales as compared to the total number of products the firm sells overall in the industry.

Enhancing Customer Satisfaction

An important element of obtaining new customers as well as getting additional sales from existing customers is keeping customers satisfied. Satisfaction can mean good reviews, referral business, and lifetime customers. Objectives for customer satisfaction usually involve the sales force working with customers and obtaining reviews and endorsements.

Designing the Sales Force Strategy and Structure

There are many ways to design and develop a sales force. Careful thought to the customer is usually the best practice for establishing the right structure. Other factors in determining the best structure involve the company and its products. Sometimes organizations utilize all of the methods to structure the sales force.

For example, Pfizer has a neuroscience product and structures its sales force by product, customer type/size, and geography. The Pfizer pharmaceutical sales representative for the neuroscience product calls on neurologists, represents only one or two products so that they are an expert on the efficacy and uses, and has a very tight geographical territory, usually focused on a few zip codes depending on the number of neurological medical practices in a given area.

Determining the Size of the Sales Force

Investing in a sales force is significant for any company. Sales professionals must be properly incentivized, and the pay and benefits packages can be quite high for experienced and well-trained employees. Companies must determine the number of potential customers as well as the time to nurture prospects into customers. The size of the sales force must be considered in relation to the complexity of the product, the profit margins on sales, and the size and number of customers in the markets served.

Recruiting and Selecting Salespeople

Hiring and training a sales force is a significant process and cost for companies. The sales manager must have a set of skill requirements and product knowledge that the right candidate must have in order to fill the available roles. There is significant agreement that good salespeople all possess the traits of self-motivation, time management, optimism, empathy, and the ability to network. Many salespeople make themselves valuable based on the network of contacts they are able to maintain.

Most recruiting starts with a job description detailing the requirements and the necessary skills that are needed to do the job. Finding the right candidates often starts through listing available job openings on many of the digital job boards, such as Indeed, CareerBuilder, and LinkedIn. Executive recruiting firms can also be instrumental in finding and matching the right job candidates.

Training Salespeople

Training of the sales force is a significant effort for most companies. Many organizations have a formal training program and spend considerable time and resources to keep the sales force knowledgeable on the products and industries served. Areas of training include sales strategies and how to sell, the products being sold, the industries served, and the company itself.

The best training programs are a combination of classroom activities and in-the-field training. Companies typically have their own training programs. New hires will spend a couple of weeks to a few months in training before they are given their own accounts and territories. Training, however, is not only for the newly hired sales professionals. Most companies have continuous training requirements for their sales force. Training for existing employees often includes company processes, information on products, and enhancing sales skills. Most top-performing sales teams spend time training with company managers as well as other sales professionals.³

Compensating Salespeople

Compensation of the sales force is typically focused on providing a fair wage as well as incentivizing and motivating. Many organizations combine a variety of compensation methods to meet both individual goals and the overarching organizational goals.

Supervising and Evaluating the Sales Force

While most sales professionals are self-motivated, they still require supervision, and this will include methods of evaluation to make sure the predetermined objectives have been met. Sales managers are tasked with developing the objectives and goals as well as monitoring and evaluating the success of the sales effort. There are a number of methods used to supervise and evaluate.

Quantitative assessments focus on the items that can be measured. They are less subjective and allow the sales manager to focus on the goals and objectives set for the sales force. A quantitative assessment may include a scale to rank activities of the sales force. For example, Paychex may evaluate the sales force based on how many leads they have acquired in a given month, the number of meetings with prospects, and the number of communication touch points with existing clients.

Another key element of evaluation includes the behavioral aspects of selling. Behavioral evaluations tend to be subjective in nature; however, they can be very helpful in identifying the right actions for the sales force to be effective at selling. Typically, a sales manager may accompany a sales professional for a day. The goal of the sales manager is to see how the sales professional handles their day, communicates with clients, answers questions, and conducts follow-up activities.

Useful Metrics to Assess Sales Performance

There are many metrics utilized by sales managers to gauge the performance of the sales force. The metrics should align with the goals and objectives of the organization and the sales function. Ideally, sales managers rely on metrics to provide the sales force with clear targets to work toward.