The field of sales is constantly evolving. To remain competitive, sales forces must work harder to improve their skills and competencies. What can you do to increase the effectiveness of sales forces?
Step 1: Clarify your goals and segment your sales forces
Having clear and specific goals is essential. How do you want to motivate and increase the effectiveness of sales forces without a specific goal? These objectives must derive from the strategy put in place in relation to the current operation, in order for it to be successful. They have to be SMART :
- S is for Specific : With specific goals, you can visualize your journey from start to finish.
- M is for Measurables : Without measurement, it is impossible to assess your progress or to know if you are on the wrong track and need to change course.
- A as Acceptable : Be ambitious and determined when setting goals, but also be sure to consider your limitations.
- R is for Realists : Continuing with the “acceptable” criterion mentioned above, your goals must also be realistic and relevant. You won't encourage your team to excel if your goals are completely unattainable or, on the contrary, too easy.
- T is for Temporally Defined : A time-bound goal may include starting and ending points, or a set of time-bound parameters or milestones.
Sales force segmentation is often divided into three sections:
- Successful salespeople who are much more contributors to sales than others.
- Average salespeople, who represent a large majority of your business population, with average performance.
- The worst performing salespeople.
Segmenting sales forces allows you to know who is performing well and who is not doing well at their job.. It is important to work on this segmentation so as not to demotivate an average seller with unattainable goals. It also allows you to distribute your efforts well in terms of motivation. Coaching and setting goals based on their performance makes it possible to increase the effectiveness of sales forces.
-> What actions should be put in place?
1 - Define goals with the SMART method
2 - Finely segment your sales forces according to their performance
3 - Give goals based on segmentation
Step 2: Give agile challenges
It is necessary to adapt according to the individual. The segmentation done before makes it possible to give challenges and objectives according to the profile of the salesperson. With “tiered” reward trigger thresholds. This makes it possible to boost the results of “average salespeople” and to make the performances of the best salespeople last.
Challenges must be thought out over time. A sales representative cannot be redone in a few days, it can take time.
-> What actions should be put in place?
1 - Set a trigger threshold for “tiered” rewards
2 - Distribute objectives and challenges according to sales representatives designed over time
Step 3: Federate your sales teams
Communicating your training internally with your teams is a basis for increasing the effectiveness of sales forces. Indeed, it is important to communicate very clearly about the operation, its challenges, its timing, the objectives and the rewards at the end of the day.. The dialogue should be simple so as not to lose the interlocutor. As soon as the process evolves (new results, new phase, new phase, ranking, next level), it is important to inform through messages.
Remotely: instant messaging tools can be used to share information.
-> What actions should be put in place?
1 - Communicate from the start to clarify the operation
2 - Federate by informing punctually as soon as there are changes
Step 4: Give out rewards that are worth the effort
To increase sales force effectiveness, rewards should:
- be proportionate to the commitment required from salespeople,
- be graduated, to correspond to the results they will have obtained,
- be motivating, and therefore adapted to their needs and desires.
The gift card is still one of the easiest ways. It is customizable according to brand colors and can be graduated, which makes it possible to personalize the reward.
-> What actions should be put in place?
1 - Set up rewards that are proportionate, graduated, motivating and adapted to the needs of salespeople.
What to remember
To increase the effectiveness of sales forces it is necessary to:
- Set SMART goals
- Segmenting sales forces based on their performance
- Make a trigger threshold for “tiered” rewards
- Distribute objectives and challenges according to sales representatives
- Communicate from the start to clarify the operation
- Federate by informing punctually as soon as there are changes
- Set up rewards that are proportionate, graduated, motivating and adapted to the needs of salespeople.
