First Step Marketing

Selling is tough. Salespeople have to be able to deal with endless rejection and still remain positive and enthusiastic.

Moreover, they must be able to make professional presentations, answer questions, handle complex requests, and otherwise turn prospects into customers.

Clearly, then, simply deciding which sales avenue you plan to use isn’t the end of the planning process. The business plan must discuss how you will motivate your salespeople. Here are three tasks that must be dealt with:

Training. The salespeople, whether they’re your own or representatives, must be thoroughly familiar with your productor service. That means they must understand how it works, what its benefits are, and how to sell it most effectively. If the product is going to be updated frequently, the salespeople need to be informed about the changes.

Even retailers and telemarketing people need to be trained. That may mean either visiting retailers or bringing groups into your company from retail outlets. In some cases, they can be educated via printed material, videotapes, and other means.

Two points are relevant here. First, training costs money, which must be allowed for in the business plan. Second, expect that the better trained the sales force is, the better it will perform. If you try to skimp in this area, it will probably show up in disappointing results.

1. Support. Your salespeople need a variety of materials to do an effective job of selling—brochures, presentation slides or overheads, samples, and so forth. In addition, one or more management officials should be available to answer questions from salespeople about things like product capabilities, delivery times, and warranties.
2. Incentives. This is a sensitive, controversial issue. Many management experts feel strongly that salespeople should work entirely on a commission basis. Others feel that salespeople should be partially on commission and partially salaried, to restrain their tendency to slash prices and otherwise make special deals to move products.

Most management experts agree that salespeople (or organizations, such as distributors or retailers) need incentives in the form of commissions, bonuses, prizes, and other inducements. The challenge comes in structuring incentives so that they benefit both the salesperson and the company. If they’re too restrictive or inadequate, the incentives won’t motivate as intended. If they’re too generous, the incentives will become more expensive than the company can afford, leaving management in the uncomfortable position of having to cut back—which is a sure prescription for demotivating sales people.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
How Will You Motivate Your Sellers?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 2:05 am and is filed under Business Management, Business Plans, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.