Once you’ve captured a high-flying sales team, the next challenge is to hang on to them and keep them motivated to grow your business. One of the ways you can do that is by using a cloud-based sales commission software that is easily accessible and which encourages collaborative working as well as rewarding individual talent. 

Foster team spirit

A salesperson who chases individual success without considering the overall impact of their actions jeopardises far more than a few extra pounds in revenue. When sales teams stop working together, they risk undermining the reputation and results of the whole organisation.

A good sales manager knows that collaborative working is essential for building sales in the long-term. Of course, any employee who thrives from earning commission is going to need personal drive and determination and that can sometimes seem incompatible with sharing support and information. But everyone benefits from transparent digital sales compensation software structured to help team members feel safe enough to input their own sales and successes without worrying that their leads might get stolen out from underneath them.

Reward the individual

Individual team members may be encouraged to be secretive if they know that only they will benefit from sales commission. A creative sales compensation structure will combine a personal commission package with team commission rewards.

This type of package encourages all employees to focus on growing sales in a collaborative way rather than be driven solely by their own earnings agendas.

Keep everyone in the loop

No matter how you choose to compensate your salespeople, you need to ensure that they have quick and easy access to real-time sales data including revenue and commission. Using cloud-based software is the ideal solution.

A sales commission dashboard is available to all employees 24 hours a day via their computers, laptops and mobiles. This type of open system links the shop or office to the road. Not only does it pull the whole team together, but it also means that commission for good performance can be tracked and pulled down quickly.

Take care of team working and you stand to boost the achievements of each individual salesperson. The right software can ensure everyone pulls together.

Sales is a varied beast, and every industry, company and even individual has a perspective on how to do it best, but you need consistency from your team.

Thorough onboarding, regular training and a good operational base are the best way to implement your brand standard, so here are some tips on how you can create that atmosphere for your workplace:

1. Have a clear, consistent sales commission scheme which is implemented across the board

Perhaps your commission scheme has different levels to reflect experience or commitment to the company, but it is vital that this should be open and transparent throughout the team.

Without a standard process or structure, resentment, gossip and vindictive behaviour can thrive as people think they are being shortchanged or undervalued. This toxic environment, in turn, leads to high staff turnover and therefore a big loss in potential sales.

2. Create sales goals which are regularly reviewed

Obviously, sales goals are paramount to any business development team, but there is more to it than that. If people feel that they have moving targets which are personal to them, they feel valued and are more motivated to keep on progressing up the ladder. Having a good sales performance management tool in place will save you a wealth of time when structuring this kind of workplace.

3. Keep training sessions short

When training spans hours or even days, concentration dwindles and the capacity of the brain for retaining information is compromised. Many of the most innovative companies around the world instead run short daily or weekly huddles in which a new subject is explored. This serves not only as personal development for your team but is also a great stimulator first thing in the morning when your team might need the cobwebs brushing away.

4. Use the buddy system

By buddying coworkers, they not only have a person to bounce ideas or problems off, perfect for conserving your energy, but they also form more meaningful connections at work. These friendships will keep your staff more satisfied with their job and therefore less likely to leave. A great way to keep your turnover down and retain solid employees!

As a sales leader, you always have to find new ways to keep your sales team motivated using incentives and encouragement to boost their morale. Here are five ways to do just that :

Sales commissions

Traditionally, sales commissions have always been effective motivators. Set up a generous sales commission scheme that does not create competition amongst your team members but instead rewards personal efforts as well as the group’s collective achievements.

Nowadays, commissions and sales tracking are made easy by efficient sales commission software, so you don’t have to do any of the tedious math yourself. 

Personalised recognition and rewards

Commissions are usually cash rewards, and often the sales reps feel like they are only being paid rather than being rewarded. Sales commissions alone are not enough to make the team feel appreciated.

Including personalised non-cash rewards as additional compensation go a long way in recognising your team’s efforts. It does not have to be much – coupons, gift cards, tech gadgets, and recreational outings are some examples to give you an idea of cash-less rewards that might interest your staff. The more personalised the reward, the more deserving and special it feels. 

If you are feeling really generous you can offer the trip of a lifetime.  Send them somewhere like Cape Town, South Africa.  Find out more about Cape Town Tourism here.

Staff training

Some sales reps may be unsure of themselves, so educate your staff on their value and teach them new ideas on how to increase productivity.

You can prepare training sessions locally for your team or organise the attendance of remote or online seminar events. This adds value to your employees and encourages them to improve on their weaknesses. 

Set sales goals

Break down your annual sales goals and hold every rep accountable to smaller daily, weekly or monthly goals. Some reps may not realise their potential unless they have their sights on a target, and may be selling themselves short by lacking clear objectives.

However, don’t discourage your sales reps with very high sales goals or underestimate their performance with very low ones either; create sales goals that are fair and achievable. 

Exciting team building activities

A sales team is made up of individuals with unique talents, skills and capabilities; you need to bring them together as a unit to work as a team.

Conduct team-building exercises to encourage collaboration and communication among your sales reps. Don’t go for the cliché ‘tell us about yourself’ sit around, these need to be fun and exciting. Go out on a wilderness retreat, try out physical games, trivia, board game tournaments and the like.

The exercise should not elicit embarrassment or personal invasion; instead, focus on bridging gaps between team members by bringing out their collective strengths. 

Get in touch with us and find out more about incentivising your sales team using our sales commission software designed for small and medium-sized businesses.

 

A sales decline can be worrying for any business. The key is to get to the bottom of why you’ve had a drop in sales.

Once you’ve done this, you can put a plan in place to get your business back on track. So, with that being said, let’s take a look at some of the common reasons for a decline in sales :

Lack of motivation

Are your salespeople in a bit of a slump? A lack of motivation is something we all experience from time-to-time. However, it results in reduced productivity, and this causes sales to decline. There are a number of ways to get your employees back on track, from team bonding days to running sales competitions.

Ignoring your competition

Perhaps your competitors have just come out with a new and innovative marketing campaign combined with a top-of-the-line product that is unmatched in the industry?

If that’s the case, it’s of no surprise that your sales have declined. Your customers have moved to the competition. Competing businesses need to be on your radar all of the time, enabling you to react quickly and effectively. 

Old-school selling techniques

If your team is going to continue to reach sales targets, they need to move forward and stay up-to-date with the latest techniques. If your employees are still using old-school selling techniques (yes, we’re talking about door-to-door sales and cold calling!), it’s time fora change.

Poor sales and marketing alignment

Finally, another common reason for a decline in sales is when the people on your marketing team aren’t collaborating effectively with those in your sales team. If there have been recent changes in your marketing strategy or personnel, it is worth looking into this further. After all, your sales team depends on your marketing team to give them qualified leads. 

As you can see, there are a number of different reasons why you may have experienced a sales decline. One effective method for enhancing sales performance management to ensure you keep on track is by using Commissionly. This is the first cloud-based sales commission and sales compensation management web app that has been fully designed for SMEs.

Contact us today for more information.

This concept can sometimes be neglected when the management focus is on the overall picture. But, with modern sales performance management apps providing tracking insights and commission reports, a clear focus on individual performance is also valuable.

Calling out individual performance within the team

Professional sports team players are prone to say: ‘We win as a team, we lose as a team’. A cynic might say that the quote surfaces more often after the latter! The best coaches know that each player’s performance adds to, or detracts from, the overall team capabilities. 

Our Sales Commission Software app is a valuable tracking tool when assessing individual sales territory performance. Gaining such insights is particularly valuable in two situations:

# The team as a whole is successful, but one or more individuals within it are not

# Individuals put in a good performance, but the team as a whole does not attain its sales target

In the first scenario, under-performing individuals can escape censure. The leader is simply happy with the overall success and doesn’t want to ‘rock the boat’. In the second situation, a leader might give the whole team a hard time, and fail to positively recognise those who bucked the team trend and performed well. 

Sending the wrong signals to the team

Either of the above actions can cause on-going problems. The successful performers feel they don’t receive enough credit or attention when the overall picture is less positive. They could become unsettled and start to wonder if there are other employers who might appear to value them more.

While poorer performers begin to realise that it’s okay to carry on as they are; the more effective team members might wonder if they should accept that a less strenuous performance seems to be accepted.

Delivering specific and consistent performance assessment

A team works well together when each individual knows that their performance will be fairly assessed. A key to this is to use specific data to clearly demonstrate their main strengths or to highlight and help, through a manager’s own insights or training, with any weaknesses or difficulties. 

A truly valuable management tool

Our cloud-based Commission only sales commission software app is a highly valuable tool in providing leaders and managers with the information they need in setting and managing sales targets, ensuring performance-driven results, and delivering the necessary level of feedback to individuals.

Contact us now to learn how it can help your business.

When you’re running a busy sales team, it can be challenging and time-consuming to create sales goals for everyone.

Some sales managers will, therefore, urge staff to set sales targets for themselves to save time. Can this be an effective system for sales managers? Is there a more effective way?

The advantages of asking staff to create sales goals for themselves

When staff are responsible, they can set themselves goals aligned to their motivations. For instance, they might want to earn enough commission to go towards a deposit for a home, holiday or something else. They know how much they need and they might incorporate that when they create sales goals.

Likewise, when staff have set their own goals, they can feel satisfied when they’ve achieved them. It also helps them to become more responsible for their work, an important skill for career progression.

They are also consciously aware of their abilities, their current sales pipeline and their calendar. Therefore, they can add/remove sales targets to ensure they aren’t over-pressuring themselves when they might have booked a two-week holiday during the month.

The disadvantages of asking staff to create sales goals for themselves

Despite the advantages of staff setting their own targets, there are also some significant disadvantages.

Initially, staff might find it hard to align their own personal sales goals to company goals.For successful business growth and employee satisfaction, personal and company goals need to be balanced.

In addition, some staff might not be responsible enough to set sales goals and will, therefore, set themselves goals that are easy to attain. Managers should be involved, so they challenge staff to improve sales results without making goals impossible to achieve.

Finally, employees might be too inexperienced to set their own targets. Inexperience may mean they set targets too high, too low or those that aren’t relevant. Managers should, therefore, guide their employees.

An alternative to managers and staff

There is also a third option for managers and staff creating sales goals. Using sales goals software can help staff or managers to formulate goals based on numerous factors like past sales performance, company goals and seasonal variance. This helps to create sales targets free from bias that can be included when goals are set by managers and staff.

When it comes to the time to create sales goals, you will want to make sure you’re giving your sales team something inspiring.

A challenge offers them something to strive for and can improve results, but when something is too hard or seems impossible to achieve, it can have the opposite impact and can lessen results compared to what they could have been should you have aimed slightly lower.

The question is, how can you tell if a goal is realistic? Here are some of the ways you can determine whether your sales goals are correctly set :

1. Every salesperson misses the sales goals

One of the first things you need to look at is the statistics across the sales team. If you have 10% or 20% of your sales team missing their monthly or annual target, then those particular employees need help. However, if the majority of your team are missing targets, then there is something wrong with the goals that are being set for them.

This is where sales goals software can help. It can track records of staff and display who is meeting targets and who is not. If you’re noticing that more than a third of your staff aren’t meeting targets, you might need to reconsider reestablishing your sales goals.

2. Time of the year

Good sales performance software can also help you determine past performance and trends, which can help you make more realistic sales goals. Therefore, targets can be set based not just on the performance of the employee, but also on the expected market for the time of the year.

For instance, you might make great sales in July, but in August, that may not be the case. August could be a historically low period for you, and only by checking with your sales performance management software can you see that this is a trend during that time of year. By incorporating trends into the creation of your targets, you can be more realistic in setting goals.

3. Consider lead times

At the same time as considering the time of year, you also need to consider lead times for sales. Processes can be quite long, and if a sales team are running low on leads, they need time to build them back up. If there is no-one in the sales pipeline, then you aren’t going to get any sales.

This can be a particular problem if there is poor management by salespeople in the whole process.

Perhaps they focus on the close rather than the rest of the sales process. Therefore, ask your sales team how many leads they have in the pipeline and at what stage they are at. Thenyou can create sales goals based on current information. You can always tell salespeople they need to improve on their lead development and set those as targets as well, to build up sales over the longer period.

Using these three tips, you can create more realistic sales goals. If you create better sales goals, you will motivate your sales team and see better sales performance.

Meeting targets either on-time or before a deadline can be really exhilarating while missing targets can destroy morale.

Morale can also be destroyed if you’re not progressing as much as you ought to be. For instance, if you’ve made seven sales in six months but your target for the year is 24, then you’re massively behind the target.

This isn’t too hard to imagine. Sales Hacker estimates that 90% of salespeople are making the majority of their sales in the last week of the month, or the last month of the year. However, doing this is often the result of harder work and more hours. It doesn’t have to be that way.

So, what can you do to get back on track if you’re not meeting your sales targets? Here are some suggestions to help you meet set sales goals this year :

1. Know when you’re behind

Everyone should be regularly checking their progress towards set sales goals. By using sales performance management tools, you can continuously monitor your progress. Doing so will alert you if you’re not meeting sales targets and give you plenty of time to put plans in place to catch up. 

Sales performance management tools can also help you identify where the issue might be. Is the close rate too low or are you not prospecting enough? By finding out where the obstacles in your sales process are, you can make relevant changes that improve results, which avoids wasting time on endeavours that make no difference.

2. Check-in with old prospects

Sometimes you might not meet targets because you’ve not gone back to prospects who’ve said no in the past. However, just because they said no the first time, doesn’t mean they’ll say no the second time. If you go back to some of the old prospects you’ve not spoken to in a while, you might find that some are now ready to buy.

Old prospects are better than new prospects because they’ve already built up a relationship with you, so a lot of the hard groundwork has been done already. This significantly lowers lead times.

3. Remain in control

Emotion is an important aspect of selling. If you demonstrate that you’re passionate about the product or service you’re selling, you’re going to get better results. But you’ve also got to remember that you can’t seem desperate.

A desperate salesman makes fewer sales than one in complete control. So it is important to control any concerns you have about not meeting current sales targets and convert that worry into a positive emotion that will demonstrate how confident you are in the product.

In any sales-driven business, setting goals and targets is key to driving increased revenue. Without a defined target to aim for, staff can lack the motivation to do any more than the minimum possible: which is bad news for your business, and your bank balance. 

In order to keep profits coming in, and to get the most from your staff, setting sales targets is essential. Thanks to the sales goals software built into the Commissionly app, you can quickly and easily assign goals to team members and their managers.

Create sales goals that work

Motivating sales staff to put in extra effort requires a thorough understanding of your current commission model. This includes current earnings  and sales of your sales team members, and the level of revenue needed to turn a profit per salesperson. Once you know how much your team is delivering, and your targets for company growth , you can start setting targets and goals which address the difference between the two figures and deliver the results through sales team compensation.

Always be realistic about your targets for your team. Goals that are set too high can actually reduce motivation. Staff need to feel that their targets are achievable. Be clear about the potential rewards for meeting or exceeding those targets, too. In addition to their regular commission, consider offering a bonus or treat for the best performers over a set week, month or quarter.

Using software for goal setting

With Commissionly, staff are already motivated by seeing their commission stack up in real time. You can also track their performance to ensure they are meeting their quota. However, you can go beyond this with all kinds of sales tools – such as leader boards to add a competitive element to the team setting.

Using the Commissionly app, you can set goals for staff, and amend them whenever required. You can follow a team member’s progress towards a target and automate the process of collecting sales and commission data for a faster, smoother experience. Plus, you can identify staff that are struggling to reach their targets and offer extra support – and you can create bigger, bolder challenges for your best performers, too!

“Creativity is often the key to devising meaningful recognition programs that have an impact on individual performance and the bottom line.”

While Commissionly is one of the few CRM systems that offer native commission software, we pay careful attention to alternative modes of motivating and compensating sales staff that personify the competitive environment in the UK, Europe and the United States, especially with some sectors reporting talent shortages.

As Accenture summarily puts it “When it comes to motivating people toward great performance, it’s not just about the paycheck.”   Many sales managers have known or suspected this for years, especially in downturned economies when the selling cycle gets longer. Some companies may uncomfortably acknowledge that the number of calls necessary to close a deal has also jumped.   For instance, it is not uncommon to require six or more calls to close a deal in some sectors.

And conversion rates—moving from the initial call to the presentation stage, and then converting proposals to sales—are trending down for some industries, while in others the uptick in the U.S. economy may be moving them in the opposite direction.   Regardless, there will come a point in every small business lifecycle where they will experience some of the pain points above, which has a dramatic effect upon sales force motivation and performance.

“That leads to a situation where you have to know more and sell harder, but where you may be less effective in your overall success rates,” said Accenture. Traditionally higher commission and compensation rates may sound like the most sensible way to keep your sales force stimulated, focused and closing deals.

However, recent research indicates that this may not be the case with your sales force quenching for support in basic areas including sales enablement and tools, reducing quote cycle times, getting better documentation, and developing a product that is differentiated and easier to sell.

Modern authors like Daniel Pink, have also found compelling case studies in the software development industry which support the arguments above noting that one CEO decided to completely eliminate sales commissions after experiencing a protracted increase in commission complexity resulting from salespeople gaming the system and management constantly attempting to plug the holes.

For instance, salespeople would take advantage of early commission schemes by pushing sales into the time period most advantageous for them, by underselling one month to show a bigger gain the following month.   Soon the compensation software consumed large amounts of internal resources as management attempted to fight back, ultimately removing their focus from product and service development.

Frustrated by the process and results, the CEO decided to investigate eliminating sales commissions altogether, receiving at first, mixed and conflicting feedback from his sales force regarding this dramatic proposal:

“When I explained it to Tom [not his real name] he said, ‘It sounds like a really good idea. But James would never like it; he’s solely motivated by money. Remove the commission and he’ll leave.’ James said, ‘Sounds great. But it will never work with Tom. Money is all that drives him.”

Thus, according to Pink, not only were commissioned sales not leading to better performance, it wasn’t even the arrangement salespeople themselves preferred

The CEO decided to remove commissions and instead pay his sales force a healthy salary, which gradually resulted in increasing sales. Of course, this new scheme did have some casualties, with two salespeople promptly leaving. However most stayed and are thriving – including Tom and James, referenced above.

“Rather than relying on carrots [sell more and you can buy the new car] and sticks [don’t sell enough and you won’t be able to feed your kids], we are compelled to make our salespeople’s work more interesting, to set better goals and encourage teamwork,” said the CEO.

The result was collaboration and commitment increased and they became agents for the customer rather than a salesperson. While this strategy may not work in all industries it is worth acknowledging the drawbacks with the age-old use of commission structures.

According to Accenture, financial compensation—though not, strictly speaking, a physiological need—is analogous to the lowest tier of needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. It is basic and important, but it touches upon only one dimension of motivation and a comparatively low-level one at that.