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Benchmarks of Successful Sales Force Performance

Benchmarks of Successful Sales Force Performance


Abstract

For any organization, the works of its departments can only 'script' a success 'story'. Among them, sales department's role is very significant. Sales department and its personnel only takes care of the 'final output' of an organization, and will handle the all-important customer. So, the success or the failure of the organization, and its output will be literally in the hands of these personnel. And, this paper through an article, "Benchmarks of successful sales force performance" by A Tansu Barker, will discuss how these sales personnel are impeded by various factors in their path of excellence. And, importantly how their motivation level can be upgraded and performance optimized through theories and models, for the success of the organization.


Benchmarks of Successful Sales Force Performance

For an organization to sail into the territory of success, competent sales should be its sole motive. Simply said, Organization is a physical setup or could even be an invisible setup, where unison of humans takes place to achieve a common objective. And, if the unified humans show undaunted, unabated and unabashed conduct, then their urge to usher an organization into a leading 'utopia' will be a successful endeavor. That should be way; every department and every worker in an organization should conduct or should be made to conduct. And that will include the all-important department of sales and its personnel. Every organization and its worker's survival and success hinges on its end product. End product in the sense, an organization will manufacture physical products most times and sometimes will offer services. And both the product and service are the keys for an organization, and that 'key' only opens the door of success or profit for that organization. And, the people who hold that all-important key are the sales personnel of an organization. If a motivated sales force gives a top quality performance, it can surely push the organization to top echelons.

The best performing salesman will be motivated by some reason or other, and holding on to that motivation he/she will perform better. So, the point is, motivation in the mind will push one to give that extra bit, justifying the concept that motivation and performance are the sides of the same coin. Normally, the sales personnel will translate their motivation into performance, but sometimes their motivation level will be at a lowest point. Even the important outcome of a job, the financial benefit will not entice the sales person or any other worker to continue to work and perform better. In those difficult scenarios only, good strategies in the form of theories and models needed to be followed. Before that, the personal and other organizational reasons that cause low motivation levels in the sales persons needed to be pointed. Personal reasons that could lower the motivational levels include his/hers' interest, preferences, morals, also problems in the family, physical affliction, better opportunities etc. Apart from these personal reasons, organizational setups could also contribute to low motivation levels and this is the area where more study is needed. "In the past, most efforts to explain sales force performance have concentrated on the relationship between the characteristics of the individual and sales force performance. In their meta analysis, Churchill, Ford, Hartley, and Walker (1985) found weak relationships between these two variables. Subsequently, they concluded that the number of performance measures used might have been inappropriate" (Barker). So, Motivation cum performance level will also be influenced by organizational setups like bad working environment, inadequate pay, frictional relationship with the superiors etc, etc. But, the sales people who are in the midst of all these happenings cannot take any steps to correct the situation. So, the sales person, whose performance will be affected for no fault of theirs, cannot attempt any worthwhile steps to amplify his/hers' performance. In this context, great thinkers have put forward their theories. "Many authors have emphasized the difference between the effectiveness of the sales organization versus the performance of the sales force (Anderson & Oliver, 1987; Babakus, et al., 1994; Cravens et al., 1993; Oliver & Anderson, 1994) (Barker)". And, all have come to the conclusion that sales person's performance is correlated with the organization effectiveness and it should be judged on that basis only. That is, if simply said, if the organization provide good working environment with all the variables and also gives a top-level performance of its own, then the performance of the sales person will also be of high level. "Sales force performance should be separated from sales organization effectiveness, and sales force performance should be evaluated using only the factors that are controllable by the salesperson" (Barker).

"On the other hand, sales force performance is based on the behavior and output of the individual salesperson" (Barker). This is where the organization's management and the superior officers come into the picture. That is, if there is no fault in organizational effectiveness and the organization is functioning very well, then the blame will be on the individual sales persons. The salespersons due to lack of certain skills may not perform, but also may not be willing to learn or acquire the missing skills. And also, even if they have all the needed skill they may not perform up to the levels expected due to other factors. Both these drawbacks will be due to lack of motivation on the salespersons part and that could be controlled by the initiatives taken by the management. "Faced with the necessity of improving the effectiveness of their salesforce, managers have become aware of the need to apply new technologies to improve salesforce productivity (Swenson & Adilson, 1992). Managers' efforts have included better account management practices and lead generation attempts, computer-assisted sales programs, telemarketing, and systems contracts (Hise & Reid, 1994) (Barker)". Apart from these strategies, the concept of Allocating Rewards, incentives and Status to the deserving and apt candidates or workers is an important motivational tool. In an organization, the salespersons do their duties for personal motivations like money, looking after their family etc, but their motivation level will get a great boost if they receive rewards and promotions. Rewards and promotions to deserving and 'success achieved' workers will motivate them to give better results and motivate others also, to reach that status. So, leaders can quickly get across their own priorities, values, assumption, etc and importantly organization's goals and profits by consistently linking rewards and punishments to the activities of the candidate. Another strategy that the management should adopt is to build a team spirit, without isolating anyone. This would give them the feeling that they are part of the organization and should contribute for its well being as well his/hers. Target oriented sales will also give that added motivation for the sales person. That is, fixing target, in the number of sales will give the sales person a clear target to aim and push him/her to reach that number.

So, if all these theories and models are implemented well, the motivation and the performance level of the salesperson will reach the peak and they will transform into an effective sale force. "Effective sales forces are more adaptive in selling, handle customer complaints better, and generate higher market shares and profits, especially by selling new products" (Barker).

So, for all the workers to perform up to optimum level, motivation is crucial. That motivation in most cases will be inbuilt and in other cases it needed to be built by the superior management. This also applies to the all-important department of sales and its personnel. "Management of the sales force is a crucial area in many firms, both because of the number of people employed and the amount of funding required to maintain a sales force". So, if all the parts of an organization including sales, conduct with motivation, unity and performance, they can be fully utilized to have ubiquitous presence all over the world for the organization.





References

Barker, Tansu. Benchmarks of successful sales force performance. Retrieved on February 2, 2007.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3638/is_199906/ai_n8831752/pg_1
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Posted by: Jeffrey J. Thomson

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