Sales Operations Effectiveness Workshop
SMA’s two-day Sales Operations Effectiveness Workshop focuses on trends in managing sales force productivity, drivers of sales operations department effectiveness, and emerging developments in sales technology. Learn more.
iPads in the Sales Force
Who's using them, and why? Find out by participating in SMA's research initiative on tablet PC usage in sales organizations.
Motivating the Sales Force - What's Working?
We're addressing this topic in upcoming chapter meetings. Learn more about SMA’s Local Chapters by signing up to attend a meeting (or consider helping us start a chapter!). Learn more.
Certification Programs for Sales Operations and Sales Management Professionals
The Sales Management Association now offers two new professional designations: the Certified Sales Management Professional (CSMP) and the Certified Sales Operations Professional (CSOP). Learn more.
Social Media and Sales Management
Learn current practices, trends, and emerging issues related to the sales organization's use of social media. Participate in SMA's Social Media and the Sales Force Research Initiative.
February 17, 2012
What's Working for Sales Leadership?
We're addressing this sales management effectiveness topic in upcoming chapter meetings. Learn more about SMA’s Local Chapters by signing up to attend a meeting (or consider helping us start a chapter!).
What makes a motivated sales force? What role do sales leaders play in creating, or enabling (or at least not stifling) that motivation? What best practices are used by sales organizations and sales managers to deploy effective incentive systems, performance management approaches, and employee engagement strategies?
SMA’s Local Chapters will be examining this question in a series of interactive panel discussions and networking events. We’ll use this space as a repository of contact information for meeting attendees, meeting notes and deliverables, and suggested additional resources on the topic.
Chapter meetings addressing this topic
Atlanta | 20 April 2012 : Register
Webcast
Management By Riding Around: Conducting Ride-Alongs with SalespeopleJanuary 27, 2012
What’s the first thing a sales effectiveness consultant (worth their salt) will build into a proposal? Ride-alongs with your sales organization. The reason is simple: direct observation can tell you almost everything you need to know about a salesperson’s effectiveness. Ride shotgun enough, and you’ll also gain understanding of bigger issues underpinning organization performance, like strategy, support, and process. The observational data, stories, and insights gleaned from working with salespeople can give consultants – or managers – enormous credibility.
In this SMA webcast, we’ll review the “when,” “how,” and “why” of manager/salesperson ride-alongs.
Presented by Catalytic Advisor's Everett Hill.
This is the first in a series of webcasts focused on gathering sales force performance data. The series focuses on analysis, observation, and benchmarking techniques used by management consultants, sales operations practitioners, and sales leaders to improve managerial insight into sales effectiveness.
Download Management Planning Guide.
Webcast
Sales Effectiveness in the New Sales ParadigmJanuary 25, 2012
New Research on Sales Force Effectiveness From Forrester
Companies across all industries are rethinking their selling systems. Under continued pressure to improve productivity without raising selling expense, sales forces must now respond to disruptive changes in how customers buy. Empowered, digitally-armed and connected buyers are exerting greater control over buyer/seller conversations, and they’re engaging less with salespeople.
Who can blame them? Inadequately empowered salespeople from silo-oriented organizations offer less value – and take up more time – than simply surfing the web.
In the new sales paradigm, businesses must transform their selling models into dynamic, communications-intensive systems, empowering individual sellers to define, create and deliver value to customers. Gain insight into how progressive sales organizations are invigorating teams with tools and processes empowering them as 21st-century sales warriors.
Presented by Forrester’s Scott Santucci.
Research Brief
2012 Sales Operations Issues StudyJanuary 05, 2012
The most recent update to our annual Sales Operations Issues study includes input from sales operations professionals from 125 firms, with median annual revenue of US$400 million. Highlights include analysis of sales operations departments' accountabilities, roles, and most important issues, respondents' assessment of their current performance in key functional areas, reporting relationships, and job titles.
Survey findings correlate issues deemed "most critical to sales operations." These are issues that intersect when rated by three criteria: those considered most important to sales force performance, those issues with which Sales Operations is highly involved, and those which are judged lowest performing. These critical issues include: redesigning sales force roles and responsibilities to optimize performance, improving account planning quality, improving new hire onboarding, and improving sales manager training effectiveness.
Research Brief
Supply Chain Has an Operations Plan. Does Your Sales Force?December 21, 2011
Companies typically apply operations strategy to the supply chain, establishing clear principles and processes for operating, directed at specific goals such as reducing costs and speeding up delivery times. The leaders of consulting firm Sales Economics, Inc., explain that applying the same kind of strategy to the sales organization can help the company make best use of resources and increase company competitiveness and profitability.
Webcast
Sales Operations' New Social AgendaDecember 15, 2011
Social media has changed the way customers buy, and redrawn relationships between buyers and sellers. In response, sales operations departments are refocusing support investments, and aligning social media strategy with their sales organizations. In this SMA webcast, we’ll review how sales forces are harnessing social media to find, grow, and retain customers, and how sales operations departments are deploying social media tools that maximize productivity. Presented by InsideView's Ralf vonSosen, Vice President of Marketing and Laura Molex, Customer Success Manager.
Webcast
Training Sales Managers: Best PracticesNovember 03, 2011
Sales managers can have an outsized impact on the sales organization’s performance. Why then, do so many companies invest so little in sales manager training? Firms that skimp on sales manager training forgo a critical opportunity to impact overall sales force effectiveness.
In this SMA webcast we outline best practices in sales management training, and detail how several leading firms have overcome the unique challenges associated with training this pivotal role.
Drawing on experience assisting world class, Fortune 500 sales organizations develop comprehensive sales management training programs, Vantage Point Performance’s Michelle Vazzana will reveal practical insights for impacting sales manager development.
Topics include:
- Sales management’s distinct role
- Identifying managers’ specific training needs
- Integrating core skills into a management system
- Linking management behaviors and sales force performance
- The investment required and the return you can expect
- A real-world case study of success
Webcast
Playbooks, Portals, and Platforms:October 26, 2011
Three tools re-shaping tomorrow's sales organizations
Sales organizations are constantly innovating. In this webcast, we review three recent practices generating attention from leading sales organizations and solutions providers. These include sales playbooks, portals, and sales enablement platforms. Presented by Callidus/iCentera’s Craig Nelson, Vice President of Sales Enablement, this webcast provides specific examples, documents best practices, advises on adapting these ideas to your organization, and suggests how practitioners are defining ROI after adoption
Webcast
Quota Setting Best Practices for Sales OperationsOctober 19, 2011
Effective quota-setting programs are essential for growth planning, strategy, enabling productivity, and measuring results. Drawing from Better Sales Comp Consultants' recently-concluded research on sales operations’ quota-setting practices, this webcast features insights on what’s working for sales operations practitioners. Presenters include BSCC's Ted Briggs and Clinton Gott, and Fred Sass, Director of Product Marketing at Varicent Software.
Topics include
- Quota owners and approach
- Tools and data utilized in process
- Quota communication
- Quota adjustments
- Perceptions and results
- Priorities and challenges
Webcast
Measuring Sales Coaching SuccessOctober 02, 2011
Management's Key Performance Indicators
Many sales organizations embrace coaching as an essential sales management role. With good reason: coaching's impact on sales force effectiveness and salesperson development has a tangible impact matched by few other management activities. Yet even those organizations that make sales coaching a priority sometimes struggle with how best to measure sales coaching effectiveness.
In this SMA webcast we examine Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) considered critical to successful coaching programs.
Topics:
- Fundamentals of measuring sales coaching success
- Holding management accountable for sales coaching results
- Best practices for using coaching KPIs
Presented by Callidus Software's Curt Richtermeyer, and Wendy Reed, EVP The TAS Group.
