Assignment no 4

Sales Force Management

Submitted To:
Sir.Muhammad Amir

Submitted by:
Umair Ali Khan SP17-BBA-020

Date 26 July 2020

COMSATS University Islamabad,
Abbottabad Campus

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Q1:- How do you motivate sales representatives when money is not effective?
What can a sales manager do to motivate the successful salesperson?

Sales team motivation is not all self-help gurus and cheesy inspirational quotes. It isn't
even about fame and fortune. No, really. To maintain effort, drive, and results, your sales
reps need to find and optimize motivators beyond money that work for them. Here's how
to find the non-cash incentives that will take your sales team to the next level.

“Money isn’t everything.” Now there’s a saying that likely isn’t thrown around too much
in sales departments. With deals to close, quotas to meet, and KPIs to track, your sales
team needs to be working efficiently to bring in that revenue. But there is one area where
money truly isn’t everything: sales rep motivation.

Following tips

1. Focus on key sales activities instead of results

Focusing on sales results alone can be stressful, especially considering that as a

salesperson or sales manager, you can influence yet never control results. You can control
the inputs that have the highest positive effects on achieving your goals your activities.

For instance, you can control whether or not you make a sales call, and you can control
what percentage you talk compared to listen on that call, yet the prospect’s decision to buy
or say goodbye is entirely up to him or her.

Motivate your sales team by encouraging them to build their schedule around key sales
actions. Focus on the means, and the ends will come.

2. Public displays of appreciation

An important determinant for happiness on the job is whether you feel appreciated
for your work. Many of the articles curated for this article (for example, Canadian
Business, Fortune, Business Insider) highlight appreciation as a cornerstone of any
organizational strategy to encourage motivation at work.

Some quick suggestions to let your sales staff know you care about them. Don’t just
celebrate big milestones, celebrate the small ones, too.

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Give specific compliments. Tell employees you trust them, then back your words up by
showing employees you trust them. Have an open door policy to encourage transparency
and openness.

Say the words that everyone loves to hear: “Thank you. “Every month have an
“appreciation day” for a standout employee who doesn't necessarily have that month’s best
sales.

Give “appreciation awards.”

3. Set a destination, not a path

Bhavin Parikh, CEO of a test preparation company, discusses employee happiness

in Fast Company, saying that since we all love the feeling of ownership, it’s important to
give employees a sense of ownership over their projects.

One way to do this is to “set a destination” (the goal itself) for your salespeople but trust
them to “find the path” (to decide what work needs to be done to achieve the goal).

4. Blur the line between boss and employee

Stefanie Daneau concurs with Parikh that a sense of ownership adds to employee
happiness.Writing in Entrepreneur, she has some sage advice for leaders: share.
Specifically, whenever a new project arises, a new team leader (not the manager) should
be given primary responsibility for it. Daneau says giving every team member a shot in the
driver’s seat builds a sense of ownership and team.

If you’re the manager of a sales team, what responsibilities can you delegate? Another way
to look at this is: What tasks can you move off your plate that will motivate your team
members grow.

5. Question efficiency if it’s not linked to meaning

In The New York Times, Barry Schwartz explores how companies often strive for
efficiency that, on the surface, should make workers more efficient.

Yet such reutilization and division of labour comes with the unwanted human cost of
employees deriving less satisfaction from their work. It’s an often unrecognized trade-off:
the goals of efficiency and ultimately greater profits come at the price of decreased
employee happiness.

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6. Autonomy

Karl Staib posits that some people simply don’t realize they already have a large
amount of autonomy in their jobs. What Staib, author of the book Work Happy Now,
recommends is as straightforward as it is brilliant. Remind employees about the autonomy
they already have.

What freedoms are your salespeople not taking advantage of.

7. Interconnectedness

In Quartz, Jayson Marwaha says Medicare started using results from patient
satisfaction surveys to calculate how much money to pay hospitals. This change led to
hospitals improving the patient experience, yet resulted in changes that definitely didn’t
make nurses happier.

Discussing how happy caregivers create a happier patient environment, Marwaha’s article
speaks volumes about the connection between happiness and how we shouldn’t just
emphasize the importance of one group’s happiness yet neglect another group’s happiness.

Your sales team shouldn’t focus solely on your clients’ happiness. Keep in mind that if
your team focuses on each other’s’ happiness, this will positively affect the client
experience. As Spherion put it, happiness “brushes off” onto others.

8. Over-deliver

James Altucher, the author of books about wealth, success, and happiness such as I
Was Blind But Now I See and How to Be The Luckiest Person Alive, asked himself a
great question in a LinkedIn post: “Why does over-delivering make me more happy and
productive?” He has an equally excellent answer: “I have no idea. I do it and it works.”

Luckily for us, Altucher provides some insight into how to over-deliver. He recommends
that we shouldn’t give people what they expect — we should instead give them what they
deserve.

Do you sometimes feel like we’re living in a world where you have to take whatever you
can? If so, as Altucher says, a better approach is to flip that around and to give what you
can.

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9. Transparency and honesty

Ryan Harwood, CEO of PureWow, maintains that happiness is affected by

transparency and honesty. An example he gives in Fortune relates to management making
a big decision or implementing a new policy. Sure, some staff might agree with the
decision or policy, but if management explains the rationale behind it, the staff is more
likely to understand and respect it.

Have you recently made big changes to how sales are conducted? If so, did you not only
get buy-in from your team, but also a sense that they understand the rationale behind the
change.

10. Good old-fashioned “happiness interventions” such as chocolate.

Chocolate and clips from a comedy movie were two things a research team called
“happiness interventions” and “short-run happiness shocks” in recent experiments.
Conducted by three University of Warwick researchers, these experiments tested whether
they could “induce happiness” in their subjects. They found a link between human
happiness and performance. Indeed, they reported that happier employees are about 12%
more productive than average.

We wouldn’t suggest using these findings to justify stocking your office kitchen with
Hershey’s Kisses and M&Ms, or letting your staff watch YouTube for an hour each
morning at work. But then again, if it’s for a greater cause.

11. Show me the money

Can money buy happiness?

While many workplace gurus extol non-financial drivers as being crucial to employee
happiness, a regular paycheck certainly motivates a large percentage of employees.

Three recent surveys by Spherion, SAP and the Society for Human Resource Management
come straight out and say the No. 1 factor that motivates employees and makes them
happy is compensation.

12. Show me the benefits

But it’s not all about your salary, Jada A. Graves avers in Business Insider.

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Even if your salespeople are each pulling in six figures, there will moments in their careers
when nothing matters to them as much as benefits your company provides, such as
wellness programs, vacation time, nutrition counseling, child care assistance, vision
insurance, employee discounts and so on.

Citing a MetLife survey about benefits, Graves writes that employees who are satisfied
with their benefits are twice as likely to be satisfied with their work.

What benefits are you offering your sales team beyond what the market offers?

13. Forget money and benefits, just show me thanks

Perhaps pay and perks aren’t the be-all and end-all.

Speaking about how a company doesn’t have to necessarily compete against what other
companies in the marketplace are offering in terms of money and benefits, Laura Troyani,
marketing director of TINYpulse, says how you treat employees on a regular basis for
example, positive workplace interactions plays a key role in their satisfaction.

Motivate Saleperson

I became a business school professor, I worked as a management consultant. One

engagement in particular had a profound influence on my career. The project involved
working with the Asia-based sales force of a global consumer products company. This
company practiced “route sales,” which meant reps spent their days visiting mom-and-pop
convenience stores, servicing accounts. One thing about the organization surprised me: Its
sales managers spent inordinate time listening to the reps complain about their
compensation.

The complaints were based on what the reps saw as a myriad of problems. Their
quotas were set too high, so they couldn’t possibly reach them. Or their territory was
subpar, limiting their ability to sign new accounts. Sometimes the complaints focused on
fairness: A rep who was hitting his quotas and making decent money would want a
manager to do something about a “lazy” colleague who was earning outsize pay simply
because he had a good territory. Imagine any conceivable complaint a salesperson might
have about pay, and I guarantee that sales managers at my client’s company had heard it.

Before I became a business school professor, I worked as a management consultant. One

engagement in particular had a profound influence on my career. The project involved

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working with the Asia-based sales force of a global consumer products company. This
company practiced “route sales,” which meant reps spent their days visiting mom-and-pop
convenience stores, servicing accounts. One thing about the organization surprised me: Its
sales managers spent inordinate time listening to the reps complain about their
compensation.

The complaints were based on what the reps saw as a myriad of problems. Their quotas
were set too high, so they couldn’t possibly reach them. Or their territory was subpar,
limiting their ability to sign new accounts. Sometimes the complaints focused on fairness:
A rep who was hitting his quotas and making decent money would want a manager to do
something about a “lazy” colleague who was earning outsize pay simply because he had a
good territory. Imagine any conceivable complaint a salesperson might have about pay,
and I guarantee that sales managers at my client’s company had heard it.

Companies fiddle constantly with their incentive plans but most of their changes have little
effect. Here’s a better approach.

The reps weren’t the only ones obsessed with the compensation system. The company
liked to play around with the system’s components to try to find better ways to motivate
reps and boost revenue, or to increase the return on the money it spent paying salespeople
—a large part of its marketing budget. This company’s sales comp system was fairly basic:
Reps earned a salary and a commission of around 1% of sales. The company worried that
the system was too focused on outcomes and might over- or under-reward reps for factors
outside their control. So it began basing compensation on their effort and behavior, not just
on top-line sales. For instance, under the new system, a portion of compensation was based
on customer satisfaction surveys, the number of prospective accounts visited (even if they
didn’t buy), and the retention of existing accounts.

Largely because of this consulting assignment, I became so curious about the best ways to
compensate salespeople that I began reading academic articles on the subject. Eventually I
pursued a PhD in marketing at Yale, where I studied the theory and practice of how
companies can and should manage and pay salespeople research I now continue at Harvard
Business School.

Although there are fewer academics studying sales force compensation and
management than researching trendy marketing subjects, such as the use of social media or
digital advertising, in the past decade it’s become a fast-moving field. While some of the

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 basic theories established in the 1970s and 1980s still apply, academics have begun testing
those theories using two methods new to this area of research: empirical analysis of
companies’ sales and pay data, and field experiments in which researchers apply various
pay structures to different groups of salespeople and then compare the groups’ effort and
output.

This new wave of research is already providing evidence that some standard
compensation practices probably hurt sales. For instance, the research suggests that caps
on commissions, which most large companies use, decrease high-performing reps’
motivation and effort. Likewise, the practice of “ratcheting” quotas (raising a salesperson’s
annual quota if he or she exceeded it the previous year) may hurt long-term results.
Research based on field experiments (as opposed to the lab experiments academics have
been doing for many years) is also yielding new insight into how the timing and labeling
of bonuses can affect salespeople’s motivation.

In this article I will take readers through the evolution of this research and suggest
the best ways to apply it. With luck, this knowledge not only will help companies think
about better ways to compensate salespeople, but also might mean that their managers
spend fewer hours listening to them gripe about unfair pay.

Q2:-Are good Salepeople born or made?

In almost every facet of life, human connection and social interaction determine the
level of success we experience. The world of sales is no different.

The truth of the matter is that everybody is a born salesperson, because everybody
has the capacity to form connections, to endear themselves to others, and to interact
positively with those around them. But before you cry out “I hate selling, that’s just not
me” I know; you think it’s not in your nature, but just hear me out. Being a born
salesperson has nothing to do with your willingness to peddle miracle tonics or extol the
virtues of snake oil. That couldn’t actually be further from the truth.

Wormer's_Famous_Rattlesnake_Oil_ad

Selling is not about tricking or bullying someone into buying; it’s about having a
serious conversation with someone and adopting an advisory role.

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 Susan Cain discusses exactly this in her book “Quiet: The power of introverts in a
world that can’t stop talking”. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. Susan talks about Jon
Berghoff, a thoughtful, bespectacled man who just happened to be one of the top
salespeople in the United States. Jon’s sales success stemmed from his natural tendency to
ask questions and to listen to the answers.

“We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally. I believe that’s
what makes someone really good at selling or consulting… they’ve got to listen really
well.”

Being a successful salesperson has nothing to with business school attendance, sales skills
training or a naturally extroverted personality. Successful salespeople become successful
because they understand the reality behind selling:

It’s personal, it’s about the connection you establish, and anyone can do it.

People enjoy being comfortable, both in a private and a public setting, and if you’re a good
listener you probably make people feel comfortable. When people feel comfortable they
tend to open up, to connect and to, ultimately, buy.

Take for example these five simple sales tips to get you started:

Name – Use their name; it’s personal, endearing and demonstrates you’re paying attention
to them specifically.

Tone – talk naturally, be yourself and don’t try to put on a ‘sales voice’.

Involve – ask questions to be sure what they’re looking for and let them describe to you
what they want and why they need it.

Qualify – chat with your customer, listen and find out the important details.

Expert – confidently put forward your opinion; tell them relevant facts about the product,
after all they expect you to advise them.

It’s not about tricky phrases, obscured details or subliminal messaging. Sales is about
human connection, and in that regard we all have bountiful experience. In fact, Susan Cain
also notes in “Quiet” that despite what most people think, extroverts do not actually
perform better in sales. Nor do introverts. Rather it is the ambivert, the person who has

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 “the flexibility to adapt to the demands of the situation”, who actually manages to soar in
sales.

Everyone is born with the potential to be a salesperson; it’s just a question of whether you
invest in yourself and your own abilities, to make you into a great one!

So don’t just think about what you’re selling, think about how you’re selling it. Are you
being yourself and using your natural appeal. Be confident in yourself and let the
salesperson in you come out and shine!

Q3:-Women are playing an increasingly important role in selling both as

salespeople and as sale managers. What are the challenges facing women
and other minorities as they become involved in a sales career?

Challenges that face women and other minorities as they become involved in a sales
career is that people are not used to dealing with that type of person and the customer may
feel more comfortable dealing with the normal all white male salesperson as they have
been most present in history in sales positions. Our textbook states, “One major reason for
this unequal employment was the widely held misperceptions that some customers would
be reluctant to deal with or buy from minority salespeople.” I agree thatthere is some truth
to that.

Are women in marketing equal in the workplace?

NO!

And this inequality widens based on race, sexual orientation, and other factors!

Without divisive language and partisanship:

Let’s change how women are viewed in the workplace. Together, we can talk about once
taboo subjects like salary, job titles and descriptions, and promotions. Further, regardless
of where you are in your professional journey, you can still face setbacks.

The key to marketing career success for women:

what you need to do next to make progress while keeping your eye on long term goals.

To help you, these successful women in marketing have shared their work experiences.
Examine what they say so you don’t feel alone. Then use their advice to move your career
forward for the win. So put on your big girl pants and you go girl.

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 Career Challenges Women In Marketing Face

To understand the career challenges women in marketing and, women more

broadly face, look at this research-based data. Despite decades of work for gender-neutral
work environment and treatment, differences still persist.

This isn’t just my experience or opinion. This information comes from diverse sources of
trusted research and data like the US Census, Pew Research and Catalyst.

Further, the biggest 2 reasons women in marketing face career challenges include:

 Lack of salary and job negotiation because women tend to negotiate their starting salary
or raises less contributing to the wage gap in higher-earning fields.
 Lack of pay transparency, discrimination and bias. For pay transparency, here’s what
employees need to know.

Subtle Career Challenges That Women In Marketing Face At Work

Working women face gender discrimination twice as frequently as men or 42% of

women versus 22% of men. Often this discrimination can be subtle. As a result, women
may not realize that they should speak up.

Differences in how women get treated at work include:

 25% earn less than a man who does the same job compared with 5% of men.
 23% get  treated as incompetent compared with 6% of men.
 16% experience micro-aggressions compared with 5% of men.
 15% receive less support than men for the same job compared with 7% of men.
 10% get passed over for key projects compared with 5% of men.
 9% feel isolated at work compared with 6% of men.
 7% are denied promotions compared with 5% of men.
 7% get rejected from jobs compared with 4% of men.

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