Keys to Effective Execution
 Few large sales organizations can match EMC’s growth over the past ten years, during which time the global IT firm has enjoyed year-over-year growth rates in excess of 100%, and a four-fold increase in employees to 40,000 worldwide. One key to its remarkable growth record is its focus on sales productivity driven by high-performing front-line sales management.
In this Sales Management Association webcast, Philippe Le Baron, formerly a European sales productivity manager with EMC, reviews the key elements of front-line sales management processes, and discusses how other firms have successfully adapted these techniques to drive transformational productivity improvements within their sales organizations. The webcast addresses the following topics: five sales management processes essential to driving sales team execution; developing sales management’s impact on profitable revenue growth; implementing and managing a high-performance front-line sales management focus; and creating a blueprint for transformational change within any sales organization.
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Planning Approaches to Unlock Productivity in 2010
 Any company with a direct sales force has lots at stake in efficiently deploying its sales resources. Yet few sales organizations structure sales territories with a rigor approaching even the most routine analysis used by other “deployment” functions in the firm, such as that used by supply chain departments in optimizing delivery routes, or service organizations in managing manage mobile service technicians.
Firms who use an analytical approach to optimizing sales territories stand to unlock a significant productivity gain. In this Sales Management Association webcast, TerrAlign’s Ken Kramer reviews the fundamentals of effective territory organization, builds a case for optimization, and reviews case examples of firms who’ve realized sales and profit gains of up to 12% and travel expense reduction of up to 15% - without adding headcount.
Specific topics addressed in this webcast include: territory design best practices; factors impacting territory success; when to expand or reduce a territory; territory design’s impact on sales incentive compensation costs; and optimized territories’ impact on sales organization performance.
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Trends and Best Practices
 Businesses invest heavily in deploying field forces to service customers and increase revenues. Field resources may expand or decrease depending on business conditions, but the central challenge remains the same. It’s critical to ensure that these field resources find their targets, deliver their message, complete their tasks, document their activities, sell their products/services and receive appropriate compensation for their work – in other words, fully maximize the potential of their coverage area. The field territories are the place where all this support work meets the reality of the market place – where purchasing decisions are made that lead to the revenue outcomes.
As most companies in the field have experienced, designing and maintaining effective territories for their field representatives is a complex and never-ending task. Dedicated technological tools and approaches combined with improved market data are helping companies make this work less time-consuming and more accurate.
In this Research Brief, TerrAlign’s Jean-Yves Kainic details trends and best practices in aligning sales territories, and details the role enabling technology plays in assisting sales management’s deployment decisions.
This Research Brief is a companion article to the Sales Management Association’s January 22, 2010 webcast on sales territory alignment.
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How Sales Organizations Are Realizing Value from Sales Performance
Management Software
 An emerging software category called “Sales Performance Management,” or SPM, is providing a new level of sales management insight for firms who’ve adopted SPM systems. Interest in these systems is surging, due in part to the value they provide sales organizations confronting reorganizations and deployment changes – an increasingly common circumstance in the wake of the global economic crisis. With quick payback and strong ROI, SPM implementations are comparatively easier to justify for firms that would otherwise struggle to justify large-ticket sales organization investments.
This Sales Management Association Research Brief examines SPM in detail, including its effect on sales management practice, and identifies the key value and ROI drivers for firms considering implementing SPM systems.
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Sales Teams and the Business Value of Social Software
 Sales team productivity matters at IBM Software Group, where management believes “teams are where value is generated.”Building upon research that shows high performance for sales teams correlates to a high level of collaboration, IBM Software Group recently studied the role of “social software” in improving collaboration, productivity, and operational efficiency within established sales teams.
Their findings are presented in this Sales Management Association webcast. Presented by IBM Software Group managers and SMA members Rawn Shah (Lead, IBM SWG Center of Excellence) and Wolfgang Kulhanek, (Program Director: Social Software Adoption), the webcast will detail the analysis and conclusions of an internal IBM SWG team tasked with studying this issue.
Their work provides a fascinating look into how social software is changing the way sales teams interact, and suggests how the use of social software adds value to customer relationships.
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This study examines the infl uence of sales management control (outcome based, behavior based, and knowledge based) on the innovativeness of sales departments. Using data from Japanese sales departments, the results indicate that sales departments tend to be innovative when salespeople are evaluated based on their behavior and knowledge rather than on outcome. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
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A getAbstract Book Summary for SMA Members
 Each quarter The Sales Management Association provides members with a book summary from getAbstract, the world’s leading book summary provider. This quarter, members may access getAbstract’s summary of Coaching for Performance, by Sir John Whitmore, Ph. D.
Coaching represents a powerful managerial tool for developing employee performance beyond the typical skill and motivational approaches to professional development. This book reveals how coaching should be embedded in the process of ongoing communication and relationship building; and how effective coaching places people at the top of management’s agenda - in action, not just in word.
Sir John Whitmore is a respected guru in the field of performance coaching. He also is a bigger-than-life figure who was once a professional racecar driver on a championship team. Whitmore’s popular, authoritative book, now in its fourth edition, is a classic contribution in the field of performance coaching. The SMA and getAbstract recommend Coaching for Performance as a tremendous resource on the philosophy and methodology of coaching; it delivers practical, common sense approaches to developing people and services, and illustrates coaching’s powerful method of creating excellent results.
To download the free summary, login with your Sales Management Association username and password, and follow the link that appears after the "Read More" jump. Learn more about getAbstract’s benefits for Sales Management Association members here.
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Trends, Tools, Analytics, and Solutions for the Emerging Environment
 Sales compensation plays a crucial role in sales force execution and growth, especially as companies seek to emerge from the market stall. In this Sales Management Association webcast, two sales compensation experts will examine current trends and best practices among firms utilizing sales compensation in today’s challenging environment.
Ted Briggs, Principal at Better Sales Comp Consultants, and Brian Hartlen, Vice President Marketing for Varicent Software will present insights in the following areas:
- Trends in sales compensation design, implementation, and management;
- Sales compensation program governance;
- Tools and solutions that improve sales compensation;
- Standard and advanced analytics to increase return on your sales compensation expenditure;
- The impact of Sales Performance Management, and emerging discipline driving innovation and productivity among firms utilizing incentive compensation; including
- Best practice case studies of Sales Performance Management in Fortune 1000 companies.
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How Data-Driven Decision Making Enables Sales Management
 In highly competitive markets, the use of analytics by sales management separates the best organizations from their lower-performing peers. Combining rich new data with analysis and decision-making tools, sales management analytics help firms identify the right opportunities, deploy resources quickly, and execute profitably.
In this Sales Management Association webcast, Mike Rose, Ph.D. and Sal DiFonzo present analytical methods that address key issues for sales management, from identifying strategic opportunity and segmenting the market, to covering customers with sales resources. Also detailed are ways that data-driven companies break down their revenue streams into actionable elements, measure sales force effort and activity, and improve pipeline and forecast efficiency through analytics.
Focusing on easy to understand visual outputs and real examples of analytical results, emphasis is given to explaining the business implications of analysis findings, together with the problem solving recommendations presented to management.
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How to Measure Sales Compensation ROI
 How do best-practice firms figure out whether they are getting an adequate return on sales compensation investments? By measuring and managing correlation between their sales forces’ performance and pay. In this archived webinar, Sal DiFonzo and Mike Rose review several commonly used sales compensation analysis tools that quantify sales compensation plan effectiveness.
Using a case study, including performance and compensation data from a sales organization considering sales compensation plan revisions, they illustrate how easily adaptable analysis tools can reveal important pay plan strengths and weaknesses. Among the topics covered are: how to define incentive compensation plan effectiveness; the importance of correlating pay and performance; measuring incentive compensation plan effectiveness; and implications for incentive compensation plan changes.
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