Understanding the Sales Force

The Selling Power Blog published a new article of mine, The Top 10 Steps Salespeople Can Take to Improve. The article includes a really terrific video on the importance of tonality. I thought it would be helpful to expand on item #5, Persistence, because selling requires more persistence than ever before.

I’ve previously written about sales compensation, with the average salesperson earning $96,000, a good salespeople earning $135,000 (varies by industry and geography) and poor and entry level salespeople earning around $67,000. Several companies have recently asked me about how to hire salespeople when you can’t afford to pay even the entry level sales compensation.

Deloitte conducted a sales compensation survey and identified many issues of common concern. Some of the highlights are:

Frank Aubuchon of Aubuchon Associates, an HR Consulting Firm, wrote an article about Compensation to incent salespeople. With his permission, I have taken an excerpt from his article to share with you.

Back on Wednesday, I was part of a panel, along with Lee Salz, author of How to Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Managerand Mike McCue, editor in chief of Sales & Marketing Management Magazine, at the Incentive Marketing Association conference in Boston.

Salary or Commission?

Many small businesses can’t decide and most companies don’t believe they can afford the salespeople they wish to hire. The biggest variable in this decision is the length of the sales cycle, not the amount of compensation!

According to FreeDictionary.com, the original definition of Methodology is, “the theoretical analysis of the methods appropriate to a field of study or to the body of methods and principles particular to a branch of knowledge.” Over time, the definition has changed and one present day version is, “A body of practices, procedures, and rules used by those who work in a discipline.”

Companies that evaluate their sales forces benefit from the insights, predictions, and findings that come from the wealth of relevant information. In addition to the many surprises, including problems they weren’t aware of, they learn of many opportunities too. These opportunities appear in the form of “what ifs”, where if they make certain changes or modifications to the current people, systems, processes and strategies, they can have a major impact on revenue and profit. Most executives view these opportunities as magic because where before there were only challenges and frustrations, they come to realize that with a different perspective they can achieve their desired growth and profit. This is pretty magical stuff!

This is my 600th article since the inception of the Understanding the Sales Force Blog 4 years ago. It seems that around every 66 articles or so I write an article to explain how inferior all of those other assessments are when it comes to the sales force. The last time I made an attempt like this was four months and 115 articles ago. So it basically comes down to a formula where I provide 65 articles with great content, and in return, you read about how our Sales Assessments blow the lid off of any other assessment you place along side them.