First things first, the standards of performance
Everyone on your sales team needs to know exactly what is expected of them to achieve their work objectives. This is when sales performance management makes its appearance. One fundamental thing in every sales department is having defined standards of performance to measure accomplished goals.
Set personal objectives
You need to set objectives for each sales rep in sales performance management because they need to know why they are doing something. With clear personal objectives, every member of your team will be single-minded about what they must achieve.
Sales performance management should include objectives which cover a sales rep’s overall performance and others which cover personal sales performance. You will set specific targets for your sales reps to achieve, and they should aim to not only achieve them but exceed them.
Plan what levels of sales performance management you can realistically achieve and set objectives accordingly. Remember, setting goals will allow you to measure and monitor your sales team performance.
Get marketing involved
Sales performance management doesn’t stand on its own, it is part of a business’ top-level smarketing plan. What’s smarketing? Look at this blog post to know more. Involving marketing is important to have a clear idea of the target market, target level of sales and the sales approach.
From marketing information, you can develop your sales performance management objectives, which should point out the desired level of sales within the time period of the marketing plan. Marketing and sales planning is not an exact science, and plans will be based on predictions. But, these predictions will form a good basis for forecasting your sales performance management results.
Don’t skip the review
Reviewing individual and team achievements should be essential to sales performance management. Doing periodical reviews is critical to determining how successful your company has been in recent business cycles.
You must have a complete understanding of the individual goals and overall expectations that salespeople have met. Good sales professionals want to know how they did, even if they did not achieve all their goals. If they know what went wrong and what wend excellent, allows them to be successful in the future.
Keep good track of commissions
Sales performance management is also related to the motivation levels of your team. Highly motivated salespeople perform better and exceed all their goals. That leads to a steady growth in your company.
The motivation of your sales reps can be improved by having a good commission tracking and management. Check out these tips. Avoid costly errors in your sales commission tracking and get rid of manual processes. Add a commission tracking software like Blitz to your sales performance management strategy. With Blitz, turn your compensation plan in something desirable for your salespeople.
Sources
Longino, Eric. The Determinants of sales organization effectiveness. 2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL: 2009.
Business, The Learning. Outstanding Sales Performance: Open Learning for Sales Professionals. 2nd ed., Pergamon Open Learning, 1996.