Resource Library

Coaching the Sales Pipeline

Effective pipeline management is critical to sales force productivity. With it, forecasts hit the mark and quotas are achieved. Without it, arrows begin to fly and casualties are incurred. The key to effective pipeline management? The ability of your managers to coach your salespeople through the opportunities in their pipelines.

In this Sales Management Association webcast, Vantage Point Performance’s Michelle Teel will reveal how to coach your reps to better performing pipelines.

Topics include:

• Three classic errors in pipeline management and how to avoid them
• Proven best practices for managing a sales pipeline
• A foolproof framework for conducting pipeline coaching sessions
• Implementation best practices associated with pipeline management systems
• How to fill your pipeline with winnable deals, then coach reps to close them quickly.
   

New Winning Strategies for Pipeline Management

Salespeople work tirelessly to build bigger pipelines, but are they working against themselves? New research suggests that many sales pipelines are actually too big... Not too small. Bad deals get inside and bounce around, consuming sales reps’ time, while only a trickle of revenue drips out of the pipe. Erratic forecasts, low close ratios, long sales cycles, and a host of other maladies ensue. Frustrating stuff for both the salespeople AND sales management.

In this Sales Management Association webcast, Vantage Point Performance's Jason Jordan reviews best practice approaches for unblocking clogged pipelines. Drawing on a case study from a Fortune 100 company, this session will detail how one company defied conventional pipeline management strategies and achieved unconventional gains in productivity.

Topics include:

• The three characteristics of a perfect sales pipeline
• The single most important characteristic of a healthy pipeline
• How to re-shape pipelines for optimal throughput

Online Experts' Exchange: Impact of the Medical Loss Ration Provisions on Commission Structures for Brokers

Starting January 1, 2011, insurance carriers are required to meet medical loss ratio targets established by the Healthcare reform law. This impacts commission processes, transparency and current systems in place. In this SMA Online Experts Exchange panel discussion, we review three perspectives on how carriers and vendors are taking steps to ensure compliance while driving performance.

Topics addressed in this session include: anticipating MLR's impact on selling costs, compensation design, and distribution strategy; carriers' expected changes in sales compensation administration processes and procedures resulting from MLR provisions; and technology's role in assisting carriers and large brokers' adaptation efforts.

Measuring Sales Force Activity

How salespeople spend their time is the key determinant of sales force productivity. In this SMA Online Experts’ Exchange, our panel examines the “how, when, and why” of measuring sales force activity. Emphasis is given to specific activity measurement approaches, determining sales force capacity, and methods for balancing sales workload.

Online Experts' Exchange: Aligning Sales Territories

Assigning territories are high-stakes decisions for sales organizations; firms who use an analytical approach to optimizing sales territory assignments stand to unlock a significant productivity gain. In this SMA Online Experts’ Exchange panel discussion, we review three perspectives on optimizing territory assignments, maximizing sales productivity, and administering territory changes efficiently.

Online Experts' Exchange: Forecasting Effectiveness

"Designing a Systematic Forecast Approach"

Accurately forecasting sales force performance is a challenge that consistently bedevils sales operations and sales leadership. Sales organizations that reliably produce good forecasts use a systemic approach, guided at multiple levels within the organization, and actively managed for quality. How do firms do this? Our expert panel shares war stories, best practices, guiding principles, and recommended techniques for implementing a reliable, systemic approach for sales forecasting.

Sales Compensation Change Management

Implementing Changes That Drive Productivity, Reduce Disruption

Many of our members are preparing for 2011 sales compensation plan design changes. Any plan changes - even minor ones - can potentially create distraction, anxiety, and confusion among the sales and support personnel impacted. How do leading organizations use sales compensation changes to drive productivity improvements and positive change? We've assembled sales compensation-related content from our Resource Library that can assist management in implementing sales compensation changes to improve productivity and minimize sales force angst.

Online Experts' Exchange: "Best Practices in Plan Communication"

Avoid common mistakes which can undermine the plan’s desired impact. In this SMA webcast we detail practical strategies for ensuring a successful plan rollout by identifying five “Roll-Out Watch-Outs:” 

• Chump Champions: choosing the wrong champion for leading plan change.
• Obscured Outcomes: keeping plan impact a secret by not helping salespeople understand the right ways to maximize income. 
• Mysterious Measures: implementing performance metrics with insufficient or confusing reporting.
• Sandbagging Success by not anticipating how to define and measure successful plan change.Administration Amnesia: forgetting that new plans and processes require proficient administration processes

SMA Case Study: How Pfizer Drives Strategic Change through Sales Operations

The Sales Operations function is uniquely positioned to drive adaptive change within the organizations they support. With its access to critical data, Sales Ops enables informed decision making and contingency planning; with its close links to field resources, Sales Ops can also drive fast and efficient change implementation. Both roles are compromised if Sales Ops is over-burdened with tactical, reactive activities that overwhelm any opportunity to add strategic value.

Pfizer's Sales Operations function struggled with these very issues while also attempting a transformational reorganization into less centralized business units and selling organizations. In this Sales Management Association webcast, Deborah Reynolds, Pfizer's VP of Commercial Information Management, explains how Pfizer's Sales Operations group played a critical role in moving the firm to this new model in a timely manner, by reducing time spent on tactical issues, and refocusing Sales Operations on what matters most to the business.

Refocusing Sales Operations: Making the Case for Technology Investment

Sales Operations teams are pressed to do more with less, even as they face the most demanding competitive and economic pressures in recent history. Sales Operations tactically supports the sales function, but also leads transformational change and innovation initiatives within the sales organizations they support. Yet the rising tide of tactical demands threatens the ability of many Sales Ops departments to fulfill their more strategic role: under-resourced and over-burdened, some are too focused on bailing water to help steer the ship.

Sales Management Association's Sales Operations Advisory Board recently identified Sales Ops’ struggle to shift from tactical to strategic initiatives as a critical priority for 2010. The Advisory Board believes that several key technologies have enormous potential to aid Sales Ops' efforts. One of these is Sales Performance Management, or SPM. SPM increases management's visibility into the sales organization’s performance and deployed assets, while dramatically decreasing the tactical effort required to meet administrative demands.

SMA's Sales Operations Advisory Board: Observations, Research on Critical Priorities for Sales Ops

The Sales Management Association's Sales Operations Advisory Board, a panel of senior sales operations practitioners, academics, and thought-leaders, observes that a small number of issues represent critical priorities for sales operations. The Board's guidance shapes the Sales Management Association's focus and research in specific content areas for the benefit of our members. (Similar boards focused in sales compensation and sales leadership development provide direction in these topic areas.)

In this webcast, we'll share the Board's summary observations and guidance for sales operations practitioners charting a course for success in 2010 and beyond.

Sales Operations Research Summary

Sales operations is an emerging management discipline in firms with sales organizations of significant size. Leveraging an array of support initiatives, sales operations can boost sales force productivity through technology, process improvement, reporting, and training. The Sales Management Association believes sales management is thinking more strategically about sales operations as a critical determinant of sales organization success.

This presentation deck summarizes research SMA conducted on global sales operations practices. The study identifies leading issues, challenges, and best practices within firms utilizing sales operations departments.