Companies need to consistently measure and increase sales productivity for them to stay alive in today’s highly competitive industries. This can be achieved through effective sales planning strategies and highly efficient sales force.
Finding a concrete way to measure and increase sales productivity is one of the prevailing needs of many companies. This may be an impossible feat given all the internal and external factors that could affect a company’s sales performance.
The term “sales” generally refers to all activities done to be able to sell products and services. This is the completion stage of any commercial transaction. At this point, the customer has already agreed to partially or fully pay a certain product or service. Sale can be culminated through direct selling, pro-forma sales, agent-based selling, door-to-door salespeople, electronic exchange or business-to-business selling. There are several aspects in a company’s sales performance that need to be analyzed and evaluated to determine its sales productivity. This include new customer acquisition, client control and client retention. Acquiring new customers may be based on database marketing performance, channel recruitment and development, lead generation, and trade show support. Client control, on the other hand, may be based on customer relationship management, system integration tools and partner relationship systems. Lastly, client retention can be evaluated through account management methods, channel management and development of new opportunity in existing accounts. Sales productivity is essential for commercial organizations because a business cannot expand when its sales volume do not increase.
Improving one’s sales performance is getting more difficult every day. This is essentially because of tighter competition, development of more innovative products and technological advancement. More recently, companies have taken to providing their sales force communication tools like mobile phones, pocket computers and laptops in order to make them more efficient with what they do. Companies also have come to acknowledge the importance of conducting regular training sessions to their sales people to make them more convincing as sellers. A perfectly designed sales plan will not work if a company does not have the sales people who can meet their sales targets. Moreover, the sales force should be able to continue to supply a steady flow of customers and increasing sales revenues. Given the important role that they play, sales people usually take part in the sales planning stage. It is at this stage that activities aimed at improving sales are planned and prepared. Sales targets are also set during this stage with the use of sales planning system and appropriate software. Sales goals and activities may be planned according to regions, channels, products or clients. Sales tracking is also an important part of managing sales. Through this, sales are continuously monitored to ensure that they conform to company targets. Sales reporting is likewise important as this allows companies to recognize the efforts of those people who consistently achieve their sales objectives.
More recently, sales management software products have been offered by software developers to their clients. They contend that these products enable the latter to measure and increase sales productivity. Through these software products, it is now easier for sales departments to develop effective sales plans, track sales completion and obtain real-time sales reports. Furthermore, the data obtained from these will allow companies to come up with new ways of attaining sales growth.
