Sales Operations - The Emerging Function Driving Sales Force Productivity
Sales Ops departments are driving innovation, productivity, and sales effectiveness in many leading organizations. We serve the sales operations profession with leading research, tools, and best practice resources.
Change Your Sales Compensation Plan - Without Sticking It To Your Salespeople
Thinking about changing the sales comp plan? You may run the risk of distracting, confusing on angering the salespeople you're trying to reward. Learn more about how leading organizations change their comp plans and raise productivity, all while maintaining the sales organization's trust.
The Sales Manager as Coach
Coaching is fundamental to improving salespeople's performance, yet it remains perhaps the least understood and most inconsistently implemented management skill in sales organizations. Learn how great sales leaders use coaching to drive results.
Sales Management and Sales Operations Research
The Sales Management Association supports research that advances sales management and sales operations practice. Learn more about our current research efforts.
Webcast
Automating Sales CompensationJuly 28, 2010
Sales Management's Perspective
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 SMA webcast, current sales compensation trends are explored, including the advantages that accrue to sales management when sales compensation is automated. Ecolab's Jennifer Kerr discusses the business case analysis used by Ecolab in considering an investment in Sales Performance Management (SPM) software, a critical platform that automated their sales commissions. Special emphasis is given to the project benefits expected tom impact the sales force.
Webcast
Adapting the Sales Organization to Sales Process ChangesJuly 14, 2010
We've changed our sales process. Will we need to change our sales force too?
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 competencies – sometimes even fundamentally different definitions of success. This webcast archive addresses process change guidelines, aligning segmentation and process strategy, competency management for the sales organization, and assessing alignment between sales process requirements and sales force capability.
Webcast
Coaching Sales PerformanceJune 16, 2010
Timeless Principles for Sales Leaders
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 of other management disciplines. In this Sales Management Association webcast, Axiom Sales Force Development's Bob Sanders reviews core coaching principles fundamental to success for any sales leader. Topics covered include the role of “game time engagement,” “player development,” and an easily-implemented process for structuring coaching programs for sales teams. Focused on practical insights, this presentation provides valuable direction to any manager interested in raising sales coaching quality.
Case study
SMA Case Study: Sales Pipeline ManagementApril 30, 2010
Insights from NCR's Global Sales Operations
SMA's Sales Operations Advisory Board recently identified a list of issues critical to sales operations. Near the top of their list: improving forecasting accuracy and pipeline management effectiveness. In this Sales Management Association Case Study Webcast, Sales Operations Advisory Board member Kate Laneve, Director of Sales Operations at NCR, shares her own list of pipeline management best practices based in part on what's been successful within NCR. Includes discussion on essential pipeline metrics, implementing improvement initiatives across a large sales organization, and optimizing information delivery.
Webcast
Sales Force TransformationMarch 15, 2010
The Great Recession that followed the 2008 –’09 economic collapse forced many firms to reduce selling expense in the face of declining demand. As recovery dawns, some sales leaders question if their sales organizations have the capacity to fully exploit future growth opportunity. It would appear that with fewer sales people and reduced support budgets, many sales organizations are not well positioned to grow as the economy recovers.
Firms that prosper during these recovery periods often benefit from a transformative change in sales structure and/or sales process approach.
In this Sales Management Association webcast, David Fritz and Jerry Colletti examine the nature of successful sales transformations that are designed to re-energize profitable sales growth:
- What are the most common business drivers that lead top managers to initiate action to transform their sales force?
- What changed within the sales force as part of the transformation and how where these changes implemented with minimum disruption to the business?
- What outcomes were typically expected and how successful are companies in achieving the desired results?
