Sales & Marketing Management - October 2007 - (Page 13)

> SMART MANAGEMENT > smart sales THE CORNER OFFICE > OFFICE VS. THE FIELD One manager and one salesperson square off on issues facing sales organizations today AT ISSUE: How do you resolve a difference of opinion regarding sales goals/quotas? MANAGER: Salespeople who argue for lower quotas are really saying they don’t believe they have an opportunity to succeed. And this belief—if left unaddressed—will all but guarantee failure. Sales managers who adopt the “interest-based” approach to quota negotiations are the ones who are the most likely to end up with highly motivated salespeople. Both salespeople and managers have a vested interest in the sales rep’s success; that’s the common ground. How to Ruin a Sales Force Steer clear of these common pitfalls BY DAVID J. CICHELLI Competing objectives, creeping complexity and poorly conceived IT solutions can sap the morale and productivity of even the most energetic sellers. Read on for the most common offenses and the best potential solutions. Sickly Sales Programs Sales departments need exceptional sales management programs to function correctly.Overcome the following poor practices: I COMPLEX INCENTIVE PLANS. Reduce complexity by reducing the number of measures to no more than three. I DRIVE-BY TRAINING. Your training efforts need to be contextual, compatible and part of a unified curriculum. I SHAPE-SHIFTING TERRITORIES. Constant re-juggling of territories (no matter how beneficial) causes sellers to reduce their sense of customer commitment. I QUASI-QUOTAS. To sustain accountability,keep quota changes— such as quota relief and quota reassignment—to a minimum. I MYSTERIOUS SALES CREDITING. Avoid special sales crediting adjustments and accommodations. Have explicit, unchanging rules about how sales credits are earned for quota performance and compensation purposes. I RANDOM RECRUITMENT PRACTICES. Maintain your hiring standards with a nationally managed recruitment model. Crummy Customer Coverage Sales leadership needs to look no further than its own front yard to find the biggest offender of sales force productivity erosion. Poorly conceived sales coverage strategies comprise the number one source of sales force failure. Simply stated, many sales leaders fail to maintain correct alignment of the sales force with buyer populations, causing: I BLENDED JOBS. These are jobs where the salesperson is doing two or more dissimilar selling tasks. Sales specialization improves performance. I CORRUPTED JOBS. Decontaminate jobs that are degraded with non-selling tasks such as “fetch and get” after-the-sale customer service duties. I ACCOUNT OWNERSHIP CONFUSION.While necessary,the effective use of global account managers, national account managers and overlay specialists requires explicit account ownership protocols. I OFFERING OVERLOAD. Yes, product choice is beneficial,but asking a salesperson to sell too many dissimilar products usually overwhelms the majority of sellers. —Swayne Hill, president and CEO of Cloud9 Analytics, has more than 15 years of international executive sales and business experience. SALESPERSON: As a seasoned 25-year veteran (both as a manager and a salesman) in the major appliance industry, I have had to both assign to others—and accept myself—unreasonable sales objectives. In my younger days I would have come unglued about at a large increase in a sales objective. Today, I know that most managers realize when they are assigning an unrealistic goal to their salespeople. If and when a sales representative is assigned an unrealistic objective, he should ask his manager for time to study and review prior to accepting it and then do some homework. The sales rep should put a plan together— customer by customer, based on current and past sales history—and include the budgets and funding required to achieve the revised goal. The plan should be honest, optimistic, realistic and above that of current sales history. In many cases, a good plan properly presented to the manager will result in a reduction of the original objective. —Art Denny is the Southern California/Las Vegas sales representative for Whirlpool Corp., the nation’s largest appliance company. He has more than 25 years of sales and sales management experience. Lessons for Sales Leadership Your role is to motivate your sales force. Be positive and inspirational with your sellers, but be absolutely ruthless with any practice that can undermine their success. [THE PULSE] SOURCE: 2007 ACCENTURE SURVEY OF MORE THAN 1,400 RESPONDENTS 25% of those looking for new jobs said they were searching because of a lack of advancement prospects. David Cichelli is the senior vice president of The Alexander Group in Scottsdale, Ariz. He can be reached at edit@salesandmarketing.com. OCTOBER 2007 SALES&MARKETING MANAGEMENT www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com 13 http://www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sales & Marketing Management - October 2007

Sales & Marketing Management - October 2007 Contents Editor’s Letter Management Strategies Why Prospecting Gets No Respect Sales Strategy: Spotlight your Services Marketing: A Social Intelligence Primer Management: Steer your Team to Success Motivation/Incentives: The No-Pain Way to Gain Training: Looking for Yesterday’s Learning or Tomorrow’s? Technology: Get Trade Show Satisfaction with the Video Massage Focusing on SMB Solutions The Best Sales Force The Hottest Job Industries Overseas Aggravation Gadgets & Gear: Pen and Ink as an Art Form Books that Improve Strategic Thinking, People Skills and Sales One Foot Out the Door Work/Life: Calling in the Fitness Cavalry. Take-Aways: Bite-size Strategies to Help You Sell More, Market Smarter and Manage Better

Sales & Marketing Management - October 2007

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