Building an Effective Sales Force Organization

2007-03-08 10:33:40

( Computers )



The Important Roles of a Sales Force Organization

The survival of any business depends heavily on its sales performance. In fact, making sales should be one of the primary goals of your business. In order to attain high levels of sales, you must be able to organize and manage your sales force optimally.

In today's business world, the role of a sales person has gone beyond just selling your product or service. Sales people also perform other roles such as product delivery, order taking, providing technical support, and most importantly, building goodwill with customers. Generally speaking, anyone who helps move the ownership of a product closer to the user is considered a sales person. You must be able to make your sales people understand about these roles before sending them out into the field.

Structuring Your Sales Force Organization

Your sales force organization can work better if there is a division of responsibilities. Depending on your company's product lines and area of operations, you can divide sales responsibilities by product line, territory, or customer type. This provides clear-cut limits for each sales person and avoids duplications of sales calls. Before dividing the work, you need to estimate the number of prospects that your company expects to serve, and then figure out the estimated time and cost required per sales call. You then divide the total required sales call hours by the number of working hours per month, to derive the number of sales people you will need.

Another alternative is to divide your sales force organization into smaller teams to handle specific product lines, territories or customers.

Developing Your Sales Force Organization

You definitely need to do some sales force training to make sure that your sales people are well-versed about the product's features. You also need to train your sales force in handling sales calls, making attractive sales presentations, and dealing with customer-related issues. Your sales force should also learn the best ways to persuade customers to at least try out the product as well as how to handle rejection.

Even after successfully selling the product, your sales people must also be equipped to respond to customers' post-purchase behavior. They need to know how to respond to complaints and special requests.

Sales force training program must be conducted on a regular basis, especially before launching another new product.

Motivating Your Sales Force Organization

Selling activities can be quite tedious for your sales people. You must be ready to give bonuses, commissions and other financial benefits as rewards for excellent performance.

Monetary benefits are not the only motivators. Sales people also want recognition for their efforts, so be generous in your praises. Posting a list of the top performers on your company's bulletin boards or in newspaper ads pages will do a lot for their morale.


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