Resources

This slide presentation provides a work plan for Echo Foxtrot Manufacturing's (pseudonym) sales incentive compensation redesign project.  Employing a cross-functional work team, Echo Foxtrot organized project into three phases: Assessment, Design, and Implementation. These slides provide a helpful illustration of project objectives, a project work plan, expected project outcomes, and...Read more

See also: spreadsheet analysis template that accompanies this resource. Sales incentive compensation programs require periodic calibration to ensure an uninterrupted positive return on investment for management.  Many firms wait for the first signs of a sales compensation problem to appear before examining their program’s health.  But by then, problems may...Read more

Setting Sales Force Goals For Growth Using Maintenance, Acquisition, and Penetration (MAP) Planning Overview Alpha Bravo Distribution [ABD]* sells industrial and construction supplies within the continental US. Its Commercial Markets sales force covers small and medium-sized customer firms, and represents slightly more than half of company volume. ABD’s Commercial Markets...Read more

This Excel workbook provides templates for creating your own versions of the analysis approaches described in the Sales Management Association Research Brief: “Quantifying Incentive Compensation Plan Effectiveness.”  Each analysis template includes step-by-step instructions and a charting tool that displays results.

OVERVIEW Call centres have been instrumental in bringing business efficiences to organizations over the last 15 years. They have brought jobs and economic activity to a number of locations inside the UK as organisations have sought to set up specialised Call Centres in areas with the green field sites and...Read more

  Tracking the right performance metrics is critical to any sales organization’s success. But getting the right performance results into the right manager’s hands represents a daunting challenge in a complex selling environment. A tool of pivotal importance in this process is the performance dashboard: an efficiently displayed summary of...Read more

Many managers ignore their firm's job descriptions, or discount their value to that of HR-driven contrivances. For sales management, we think this approach is a mistake. Properly utilized, job descriptions provide enormous practical value to sales leadership. The Sales Management Association considers job descriptions essential management tools, and recommends that...Read more

How do high performing sales teams know what to focus on?  Most rely on sales management for direction on which opportunities (customers, products, segments, channels, etc.) represent the best return on sales effort.  Yet sales management rarely approaches this role with a rigorous, disciplined process. This paper outlines an approach...Read more