Sales Performance Systems



 

 

The discussion about the sales process has historically focused on the interaction between the sales agent and prospects. I think a broader view has become necessary for Sellers to maximize their marketing ROI; wherein the Agents’ selling process is viewed as just one part of the organization’s total management system designed to achieve sales revenue objectives. When the organizational mindset shits to viewing all project activities as contributors to the ultimate sales success, a well designed and managed system, which I refer to as a Sales Performance System, is the most efficient path to optimum sales results. . The Sales Performance Systems concept establishes critical organizational infrastructure, processes, practices, and protocols to manage all internal and external communications that facilitates cross-discipline collaboration and incorporates ongoing prospective buyer feedback into the sales process. Sales Performance Systems are built on four fundamental practices.

1. Superior Agent Education. Today’s homebuyer expects sales representatives to be experts about the product, real estate, home financing, and the competitive market. To meet, and preferably exceed buyer expectations, Sales agents need a solid base of knowledge so they converse with clarity and confidence regarding all aspects necessary to lead a qualified prospect to the buying decision. Sales Performance Systems promotes educating the sales team with a comprehensive training curriculum of educational/training modules taught by an array of project experts such as the project visionary, project management team leaders, architect, interior designer and as many other team members that may be necessary When the agents a well-educated they will apply sales training from management and expert sales trainers in a manner that will establish their value in the eyes of prospects and empower them to lead prospects to a buying decision..

2. Communications Strategy and Process Management. Generally Seller’s have a well planned marketing strategy and budget that are thoroughly documented, but often lack the budget and detailed communication strategy and process designed to effectively manage the pool of prospects to achieve optimum conversion ratios Effective prospect management and follow have always been an important part of a professional sales system; however, the increase in marketing and communication channels due to the larger role of internet marketing and longer sales cycles, require that a larger share of the marketing budget be allocated to prospect management along with articulating a clear strategy and sales communications process in the marketing document.. Internet marketing is proven to be very cost effective as part of the advertising and promotional mix, but the increased speed and frequency digital communications of buyer communications Sales Performance Systems use a visual communications flow manager with protocols and practices that manage cross-team internal communications and maintains timely and relevant communications with each prospect

3. Advanced Sales Performance Metrics. Sales is still a numbers game, but the numbers have changed; enter the world of Key Performance Indicators. Many organizations tend to still evaluate performance based on sales. While sales are the ultimate objective, they are the end result (lagging indicator) of the successful completion of many sales activities. Identifying correlations between sales & marketing activities, as well as micro and macro market data, will reveal Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of future sales success. Furthermore, adopting KPIs to measure sales agent performance will keep the sales team more focused on important daily actions that contribute to sales provide the basis to help sales agents and sales managers more quickly make timely adjustments to improve performance.

4. Synthesize Information.  There seems to be no limit to consumer, management, and market information; the challenge is getting to information that is most relevant to the enterprise and using the information to improve sales performance.  The process of organizing, analyzing and presenting findings into terms that are easily understood by all sales and marketing stakeholders has been labeled Data Synthesis.  The process of data synthesizing data/information into knowledge to optimize sales performance requires identifying data sources, capturing data, and integrating multiple data sources into a single database.  Sales Performance Systems are designed integrate data sources and produce analysis that is distributed to the entire sales and marketing team to facilitate cross-team collaboration that result in highly effective, real-time, sales strategies and tactics.



One Response to “Sales Performance Systems”

1. Brian Galleger says:

   April 16, 2009 at 6:08 pm

   I would agree that developers need to find ways to keep management streamlined. The idea of plugging in a temporary executive level manager makes sense…I guess in today’s market there are resources for this type of position.