Sales People or Order Takers
Discussion
Simpo Two said:
Guess it depends on whether the world is beating a path to their door or not. When I bought my house - in one of the previous housing booms - they could have got away with no staff at all - just post a cheque!
Aha exactly, so you made the concious choice to buy a house all by yourself, from that point on you only needed some research materials to make a judgement, and a bloke with keys to let you in.If you had no plan whatsoever to buy a new house and some random person bumped into you and convinced you to buy a house, that would be a real sales person!
I don't know your business. Many businesses have core products and added value ones. Target staff for those added value ones and pay commission on them.
Target them for new custom on both types of products. Agree a suitable commission level eg 5% of net sales for 6 months the a rate of 2% for 6 months.
Target them on physical visits and or digital contact. Qualify and score them on the quality of that contact. Score them on how they interact with other parts of the business - no point guaranteeing an order that cannot be made or delivered.
Think in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. The seeds of the the sale tomorrow may have been sown yesterday.
Remember they are human beings. They need managing, motivating and rewarding properly.
Target them for new custom on both types of products. Agree a suitable commission level eg 5% of net sales for 6 months the a rate of 2% for 6 months.
Target them on physical visits and or digital contact. Qualify and score them on the quality of that contact. Score them on how they interact with other parts of the business - no point guaranteeing an order that cannot be made or delivered.
Think in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. The seeds of the the sale tomorrow may have been sown yesterday.
Remember they are human beings. They need managing, motivating and rewarding properly.
Jockman said:
I don't know your business. Many businesses have core products and added value ones. Target staff for those added value ones and pay commission on them.
Target them for new custom on both types of products. Agree a suitable commission level eg 5% of net sales for 6 months the a rate of 2% for 6 months.
Target them on physical visits and or digital contact. Qualify and score them on the quality of that contact. Score them on how they interact with other parts of the business - no point guaranteeing an order that cannot be made or delivered.
Think in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. The seeds of the the sale tomorrow may have been sown yesterday.
Remember they are human beings. They need managing, motivating and rewarding properly.
Perfect answer there, OP.Target them for new custom on both types of products. Agree a suitable commission level eg 5% of net sales for 6 months the a rate of 2% for 6 months.
Target them on physical visits and or digital contact. Qualify and score them on the quality of that contact. Score them on how they interact with other parts of the business - no point guaranteeing an order that cannot be made or delivered.
Think in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. The seeds of the the sale tomorrow may have been sown yesterday.
Remember they are human beings. They need managing, motivating and rewarding properly.
BGARK said:
So based on all the tasks listed another person needs employing to manage whether they are achieving their tasks whilst keeping an eye on them.
Cost benefit analysis. If it entails setting up an entire new team then do the maths. If it involves adding to an existing team then redo the maths. As I say I don't know your business. BGARK said:
JustinP1 said:
Perfect answer there, OP.
Agreed but what is apparent is you also need the right skills to manage sales people, hence if good systems are not in place employing a sales person no matter how good they are could be a disaster.How you motivate salespeople can have unexpected consequences it the repercussions are not thought through.
I used to have a boss who's take on forecasts was to ask us what was incoming vs what was outgoing or proactive vs reactive. In his mind, the reactive business, the incoming enquiries were worth less than the outbound proactive stuff, as in - his sales guys werent doing their jobs properly if they were picking up a call coming in, but it was definitely OK for them to make 100 outgoing calls to get a meeting. The 100 calls would take a day, the meeting might take a half day.
Put against increasing the number of warm leads, it wasnt an efficient use of time.
The thing he didnt really understand was the company strategy, as in how it wanted to develop the market was through Marketing, who spent f
kloads of money trying to get the company, brand, product and messaging to a point where Sales get better, more qualified leads to explore.
If you imagine that the addressable market, 80% of them dont know they want to buy your stuff, 10% might buy, 5% will never ever talk to you and 5% are actively looking, that's about the market that we were selling in to. The customers needed fairly consultative approaches, figuring out what their business problems were, fixing them with technology widgets. It was a 4-12 week sales cycle
He wanted to hit the 80% segment because it had a larger market capitalisation, but forgot about the stuff that just needs guiding in, developing, closing and moving on. Too macho-bullst 'we create something from nothing' and way too much ego. Couldnt see his own failings either which made him a really bad manager
Put against increasing the number of warm leads, it wasnt an efficient use of time.
The thing he didnt really understand was the company strategy, as in how it wanted to develop the market was through Marketing, who spent f
kloads of money trying to get the company, brand, product and messaging to a point where Sales get better, more qualified leads to explore. If you imagine that the addressable market, 80% of them dont know they want to buy your stuff, 10% might buy, 5% will never ever talk to you and 5% are actively looking, that's about the market that we were selling in to. The customers needed fairly consultative approaches, figuring out what their business problems were, fixing them with technology widgets. It was a 4-12 week sales cycle
He wanted to hit the 80% segment because it had a larger market capitalisation, but forgot about the stuff that just needs guiding in, developing, closing and moving on. Too macho-bulls
t 'we create something from nothing' and way too much ego. Couldnt see his own failings either which made him a really bad managerBGARK said:
Jockman said:
Remember they are human beings. They need managing, motivating and rewarding properly.
So based on all the tasks listed another person needs employing to manage whether they are achieving their tasks whilst keeping an eye on them.BGARK said:
Jockman said:
Remember they are human beings. They need managing, motivating and rewarding properly.
So based on all the tasks listed another person needs employing to manage whether they are achieving their tasks whilst keeping an eye on them.berlintaxi said:
Eh, ain't that what the Sales Director should do as part of his duties?
So lets say you are a smallish sized business, and you have invented / made a great product. Do you first employ a sales director, business development manager or other type of manager before you consider employing a sales person?BGARK said:
berlintaxi said:
Eh, ain't that what the Sales Director should do as part of his duties?
So lets say you are a smallish sized business, and you have invented / made a great product. Do you first employ a sales director, business development manager or other type of manager before you consider employing a sales person?Gassing Station | Business | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff