To boost your sales team performance, be sure to assign individual and collective goals, measurable, achievable and finally, fair. Focus on the main actions for a tenfold motivation and a high-performance sales team.
The variable incentive compensation rewards the performance of your team. What will define the appropriate performance period and when to assign the right objective must be assessed. Objective of the incentive compensation of your team: to become a real effective lever of motivation. In this way, you will be able to fully assume your function of commercial manager. How? First, by implementing the company's commercial policy, then coordinating activities until the sales force monitoring. Finally, focusing your success on achieving the objectives assigned to your team.
DEFINE THE RIGHT PERFORMANCE PERIOD
The good performance period should be aligned with the employees' action plan. There is nothing better than aligning this performance period with the actual activity of the employees so that the bonus system motivates.
• If the period is too short, the efforts made by the employee on his performance and therefore on his bonus cannot be taken into account. A risk: favor bargain effects
• If the period is too long, the objective to be reached will be even bigger and further than the employee will have difficulty to evaluate. A risk: he will not find any daily motivation to reach the performance.
In both cases, a poorly evaluated performance period has adverse effects on the motivation generated by their bonuses. First case: employees will find this system unfair, thus impacting their motivation. Second case: they will find these bonuses unachievable.
Thus, it is clear that they have a clear vision of their abilities to achieve their goals assigned by their management. This is often different depending on the business and the market, the components of the sales strategy and the job of employees. A sales manager will have objectives over 2 years, where an account manager could be evaluated in the quarter.
Be careful not to confuse the performance period with the payment period. Indeed, it is perfectly possible to pay your employee every month while having performance evaluated in the quarter or semester. In this case, you will give advance payments, calculated on what you have observed.
ASSIGN THE OBJECTIVE AT THE RIGHT TIME
The objectives to be achieved at the very beginning of the performance period should be assigned as soon as possible. In this way, the collaborator will know what you expect from him. This early action will guide him through his actions and build motivation.
It is not always easy to be reactive. You often have a national objective, but you must also decline it in the region, in the sector, as well as according to each individual. The work can be quite complex especially as the definition of these objectives must be fair, means, it must give the same opportunity to all to achieve the goal. The more the objective is individualized, the more it will be fair but difficult to define
DETERMINE THE RIGHT GOALS
Reminder of fundamentals: to be motivating and fair, an objective must be "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound). In particular, it must be based on parameters that allow objective assessment, with a target that is potentially 100% achievable during the performance period. It is essential that the objectives and parameters are well understood, acceptable and accepted by your sales representatives. One of the first causes of loss of motivation and disengagement: setting goals inaccessible.
So be sure to determine exactly the type of the indicator (margin, turnover, number of cases, ...) for a given objective. The objectives are decided upstream by the company. They reflect its overall strategy and do not have to be defined jointly with the collaborator. You will assign to the achievement of the objectives, the methodologies of calculation (bonus, commissioning).
In practice, it is recommended not to cumulate several objectives. A reduced number, up to five is preferable. The performance of the collaborator will be calculated according to the average of the achievement of each objective. Some goals may be overweight compared to others, depending on your priorities.
It is recommended to determine the objectives and to propose to the manager to amend them at the margin. Why? To correct them eventually if they do not correspond to the reality of the field. Do not hesitate to review your objectives during the performance period if this is justified. There may indeed be external factors justifying it. Examples: a financial crisis, buying a competitor company, launching a new product, ...
GIVE YOUR TEAM THE RIGHT TOOLS OF BUSINESS PROSPECTING
A good sales manager must also bring his team to other means of commercial prospecting, such as for example social selling or remote selling. It qualifies its sales lines and maximizes its use of social networks, especially professional, for its sales.
Give him also the keys to take the right path to performance. Each employee must be able to objectively assess whether the objectives assigned to him have been fully achieved, partially achieved or exceeded. Our tool will help him to make these estimates. He is actively involved in ensuring the motivation of your team.
Our software allows each employee to visualize the incentive bonus acquired and to simulate his future bonus based on the performance he anticipates.
