Does it ring a bell in your head when you hear the words, “Sales Performance Management”? I am sure it does! There are millions of businesses around the world that want to know about the performance of their sales staff. How good is a sales employee in convincing the customer to buy the products or service is a great factor in the overall profitability of the organization. The management of the business needs to pay specific attention to sales personnel and how their performance is affecting the net sales and profitability of the firm.
Sales management is one branch of marketing management. The responsibilities of a sales manager are very important to be carried out with extensive care and efficiency. He has to plan, control and direct the personal sales of the firm in such a way that results in maximum profitability. His responsibility does not end at the achievement of sales quotas, since he has to create an outstanding image of the company and its products in the market. This shows us that the modern sales manager has more to do with marketing than with sales.
The sales manager sets goals for all the sales teams working under him and performs regular checks on their group and individual performance. He also motivates the employees under him to work with more dedication. A sales manager is also responsible for the distribution of the sales compensation to the employees who deserve it, as well as its calculation. Sales managers are also responsible for providing assistance in planning the 4 P’s of marketing namely, product, price, promotion and place. They have to decide what the packaging of the product should look like to attract customers, what fair price can be charged for the company’s product, what means of media to use for advertising the product and also where the product is to be sold.
As you can see, it gets very tough for sales managers to keep a track of how well the business is doing. This can be a tough process as there are many lengthy calculations involved. Today, with the help of science we have sales performance management software that measure the performance of businesses by just a click of a button. By using this software, businesses need no longer to rely on static or printed reports or manual performance management systems. Also, using this type of software saves the business a great deal of time which results in higher productivity levels since now the system automatically takes in the new results from your corporate database and compares them to targets, goals, budgets, and forecasts. Therefore, graphs, charts and diagrams are plotted automatically guaranteeing accurate results.
This software gives managers a variety of tools to keep a check on the business, mainly depending on the kind of business organization that they are running. Checking inventory levels becomes easier and just a click away for managers who are working for firms producing and selling their own products. Managers can also measure the sales performance on many different levels, weekly, monthly, semiannually or annually. Performance of salesmen and their sales compensation is also calculated with the help of this software.
