Building A Successful Sales Force



Building a Successful Sales Force

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Building a Successful Sales Force

Introduction

Sales force is the team which consists of individuals who are concerned with the sales of the company or the people who work as the salespeople for the company. The role and responsibilities of Sales force depend on the sales of the company or organization that whether the company sells directly to the consumers and customers or businesses or they make their sales indirectly. In customers' sales, the main roles of the Sales force is making orders and finalized and closing the orders. The Sales force or salespeople are not the people who are responsible for creating demands for products and services while their roles are only to make sales for the company where the demands are created by the marketing of the company or business through promotion and advertisement.

The Sales force is not required to make and maintain a long term relationship with the consumers while they are required to share and communicate information regarding the products with the consumers and make sales accordingly. Beyond that, the role of the Sales force in business to business sales take a very different path (Kurtz, & Boone, 2008).

The Sales force is compensated in several ways which may be direct payment of salary, commission, and percentages of sales, or combination of these both. In the current business environment, companies use the concept of combination of salary and commission to compensate their Sales force and sales teams while very few numbers of companies use direct salaries for compensating their Sales force. The combination is used by most of the companies because through the combination of salary and commission has been found as the best compensation system (Ingram, et.al, 2015). It is the best method because the Sales force has financial security when they have direct salaries while commission motivates them to put more efforts and make higher sales so that they would be enjoying higher incentives.

Building a Successful Sales Force

Building an efficient and successful sales force is a very crucial and critical process for every level of company and business. Companies must put all of their efforts and available resources to develop highly efficient and well-performing Sales force or sales teams. It is hugely important because the selling of products is the way through companies and businesses make revenues and profits which is the ultimate purpose of every kind of business. Building successful Sales force needs some steps which are taken into action are listed and describe below.

Identification of Organizational Goals and Objectives

Identifying the ultimate goals and objectives of the organization or business is the main consideration while making any business strategy or developing a team. So the same thing should be done when building a successful Sales force. Every Sales force needs high level and a clear vision to know that what the organization or business actually wants from them and what the organization or business wants to achieve through its Sales force (Shapiro, 1997). It means that you must involve all of the marketing players, salespersons, and customers' success teams before going to the development of Sales force. Sales force are the people who support the way the organization or business works and it creates sales and sells.

Setting up the Team and Team Players

For the organization, it is very important to set up a sample team for Sales force before proceeding to develop the actual and final team. In this process, all of the departments and professionals should be involve (if possible) where each will contribute through their expertise and specialties in building a successful Sales force. Below are some key players (key roles) which are involved in building a successful Sales force.

Dedicated Sales force Leader

Administration

Key Player (based on their past performances)

Experienced and highly skilled sales professionals

Defining the Sales Process

Defining the actual sales process is a very key factor in developing a successful Sales force or sales team. If the team (Sales force) has clear about the process of sales then they would be able to perform better than having no idea about the sales process because if they know the process then they would be putting efforts accordingly as well as they would work in accordance with the sales process (Gammoh, et.al, 2018).

According to (Ingram, et.al, 2015), every company and business has its own and unique sakes process. The process used by an e-commerce company for its sales hugely differs from the sales process used by a retail or health care company. This is not only concerned with the terminology while it is about sales activities, processes, and workflows. Like the sales process of one business or organization include the steps like prospecting, understanding the actual needs and requirements of consumers, forecasting of sales, and methodologies of sales which are aimed to achieve the sales objectives of the particular business or organization.

Defining a highly tangible and concrete sales process helps the sales force to know the actual processes which will be involved in the sales activities and which will be the part of their role (Boone, David, 2004). In this way, the sales force can be found efficient and successful because they would be able to play a vital role and put effective efforts while making sales for the business or organization. In addition, based on the research findings of (Shapiro, 1997), when you have a well-defined sales process, then you would be able to customize the sales force for objects, projects, fields, stages of sales, reports, and dashboards, etc. So defining, conveying and communicating the actual sales process would help you to develop/build a successful sales force or sales team because it would give clear understanding to the involved bodies that how to perform efficiently.

Success Measurement and Analysis

Deep analysis and measurement of every activity, plan or project are crucial if you want to achieve the desired success. Same is the case when you are developing the sales force. (Zoltners, Sinha, & Lorimer, 2009) state that for the development of a successful sales force you need to monitor and analyze every step which is taken in the process of building a sales force. This would help you to know how the sales force is going to be developed as well as what is going fine while what is not going good. So that you would take necessary actions regarding the settlement of every issue which may become a barrier in the development of a successful sales force. In this way, the organization will be able to cater to every problem and solve at the time so that a successful sale force can be built efficiently with no weakness in the force.

References

Boone, T., David, J. (2004). Compensating the Sales Force: A Practical Guide to Designing Winning Sales Reward Programs.

Gammoh, B. S., Mallin, M. L., Pullins, E. B., & Johnson, C. M. (2018). The role of salesperson brand selling confidence in enhancing important sales management outcomes: a social identity approach. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 33(3), 277-290.

Ingram, T. N., LaForge, R. W., Williams, M. R., & Schwepker Jr, C. H. (2015). Sales management: Analysis and decision making. Routledge.

Kurtz, D. L., & Boone, L. E. (2008). Contemporary business. Cengage Learning.

Shapiro, B. P. (1997). Sales Program Management: Formulation and Implementation. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Zoltners, A. A., Sinha, P., & Lorimer, S. E. (2009). Building a winning sales force: Powerful strategies for driving high performance. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.