Sales Management Made Simple

Did that headline get your attention? Are you thinking I must be nuts?

Here’s the catch: there’s a difference between “simple” and “easy.”

Successful Sales Management is certainly not easy, but I would argue that keeping it simple will maximize the production of your team.

Here’s what I mean:

1) Keep the compensation plan as straightforward as possible. The easier it is for a salesperson to figure out how and how much they will be paid on a given transaction, the harder they’ll fight to close it.

2) If you simply cannot resist creating added incentives, keep them to a minimum. Commissions paid weekly or monthly, contests run quarterly and bonuses paid annually.

3) Everybody gets the same deal. Ideally, sales is a meritocracy. Just one rep with a sweetheart deal can spoil the whole bunch.

4) Don’t change the deal. If your commission structure is a moving target, your team will come to the conclusion that they have little control over the own earning power. This is directly antithetical to what motivates good salespeople.

5) Keep everyone’s objectives in alignment. In other words, create a compensation structure that rewards the production of what is important to you as the business owner, not just top-line revenue.

6) Everybody knows how everybody’s doing. Before I learned better, I thought a “Leader Board” that published every sales rep’s production was Old School. Wrong! Good salespeople are competitive. The Leader Board is a great motivator - and scorekeeper.

The confused mind turns away. Keep it simple and keep ‘em selling.