While the global economy seems to be recovering from the 2007/2008 recession, not all businesses are experiencing an upsurge in their sales. For the last four years, many companies have gone under while those still surviving are barely holding by the straw. Though the aftershocks of the recession are still being experienced in regions such as Europe, this should not undermine your strategic plan.
One of the tools which many companies have adopted is the sales performance management (SPM) which seeks to provide critical data on sales and other aspects that affect this all important aspect of any company.
To appreciate what sales performance management entails, you have to consider what hinders business success. For a start, lack of accurate data, inability to align sales with corporate strategies, and lack of flexible sales initiatives are just a few of the hindrances you expect in any company. In addition, poor information flow among employees and channel partners as regards the measurement of their performance and compensation will also hinder good sales over time due to shadow accounting and poor handling of disputes. At another level, most businesses also experience hiccups due to the inability to analyze performance and make prompt corrections. This is where sales performance management solutions come in.
SPM is a discipline of integrating performance data with any business improvement initiatives in your company to ensure better sales performance. These solutions involve providing critical business executives with critical sales data including the point of sale for specific products, the seller and the buyer. This allows for quick alignment of sales strategies to attain the desires business goals laid out in your strategic plan. It encompasses all important Incentive Compensation Management (ICM), quota planning, sales analytics, reporting and planning and any other statistics which will help align sales to strategies. In essence, sales performance management solutions provide your company with a framework to plan and formulate sales strategies and ensure their timely execution.
SPM is a very practical tool for modern businesses especially now that they are operating at a global level. Some of the common systems incorporated in any SPM solution help to integrate data from disparate sources/ departments including customer relationship management (CRM). Using this data, your sales people can easily calculate results, automate workflow processes, provide audit results, and align sales resources to organizational goals and strategies among other functions.
How can SPM aid Businesses with Financial Downtime? When a company has misaligned incentives and lack of front line visibility into performance there is bound to be issues with finances. If a company is facing financial downtime sales performance management solutions provide compelling and measurable sales incentives that influence sales behavior positively and improve understanding of market trends. Furthermore, there is greater sales satisfaction due to faster deployment of sales plans while also providing realistic and timely quota setting thus reducing risks of any shortfalls on targets.
Simply put, a company enjoys more revenue generation and sales person productivity emanating from better management of sales resources. Sales performance management also ensure reduced sales turnover due to fair allocation of sales opportunities. While the financial tempest might be far from over in most regions, there is no reason why your company cannot exploit SPM to streamline its sales operations and leverage on productivity.
