Resources

Quota management – the process of forecasting performance, assigning goals, and administering changes – plays a crucial role in the success of the sales compensation plan, not to mention a sales organization's overall performance management efforts. In this Sales Management Association webcast, Hewitt Associates’ Scott Sands, National Practice Leader, Sales...Read more

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...Read more

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,...Read more

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...Read more

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...Read more

Although experts agree on the importance of strong customer relationships, sales force management practices often result in behaviors that weaken relationships. The current use of sales contests with quantitative objectives in relation to revenue or profit margins testifies to this divergence. Sharma (1997) emphasizes the need for a better understanding...Read more

Organizations are increasingly emphasizing online sales channels over traditional offline sales channels. This research examines how training influences a salesperson's ability to manage such a technological change in the firm's sales strategy. Findings suggest that formality of training has a positive effect and voluntariness has a negative effect on the...Read more

This study examines the influence 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...Read more