Resources

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...Read more

Sales operations is an emerging management discipline in firms with sales organizations of significant size. Sales operations contributes to productivity by leveraging an array of support capabilities, including enabling technology, process improvement, reporting, and training. Here is a selection of The Sales Management Association's research, webcasts, and other content of interest...Read more

Sales management brings a distinct perspective to the sales compensation automation discussion - a discussion too often dominated by Finance, HR, and Accounting. In this archived Sales Management Association webcast, current sales compensation trends are explored, including the advantages that accrue to sales management when sales compensation is automated. Ecolab's...Read more

Sales leaders ask with some frequency: "If we changed our sales process, could our current sales force be successful?" The sales organization must adapt in response to changes in buyer behavior, increased competition, disruptive technology, segmentation strategy changes, and many other factors. Yet different sales processes often require different selling...Read more

This study examines the effects of goal setting on salesperson effort and new product sales. Employing the motivation hub’s theoretical framework, company-assigned goals (i.e., quotas), self-set goals, and self-efficacy are modeled as antecedents to selling effort and new product sales. To investigate the model, longitudinal data were collected from 143...Read more

It’s perhaps the most impactful way a sales manager can drive performance, yet sales coaching is frequently the least-understood, most inconsistently implemented skill for sales managers.  Effective coaching is critical to any sales team’s success, and is a hallmark of consistently-high-achieving sales organizations. Coaching sales teams provides challenges unlike those...Read more

The weekly sales meeting is part of most sales managers' life. But for many it’s an unproductive and tedious routine. Too often, the weekly meeting is spent “catching up” on the status of opportunities, instead of coaching or problem solving. In this Sales Management Association Case Study webcast, Thermo Fisher...Read more

Firms undergoing sales force transformation face many challenges, and chief among them is accurately assessing their existing sales organization. In this Sales Management Association case study webcast, we review a global telecom company’s reorganization of its sales and technical support organizations, including the ways employee assessments guided their decisions on...Read more