Tweet

Performance Management

Guest post by: Tom Miller

Article Overview: A relatively new management buzz phrase, performance management, has been gaining popularity recently. Management, particularly sales management, has always been about getting results so clearly whatever sales managers have been doing prior to the emergence of this new concept should also be known as performance management. The article explains the tasks required to maximize performance.

Performance Management

A relatively new management buzz phrase, performance management, has been gaining popularity recently. Management, particularly sales management, has always been about getting results so clearly whatever sales managers have been doing prior to the emergence of this new concept should also be known as performance management.

Let's consider the tasks that best in class sales managers must accomplish to maximise performance.


1. Hire the right people.


This is rarely as simple as it sounds. Most newly appointed sales managers inherit a team and a lofty sales target. Few invest enough time in the selection process to be anything other than randomly successful. Argue for your innate character judgment skills as much as you like. Research reveals the flaws in using little more than instinct to choose the right sales people. The cost of a sales hiring mistake is huge. It must include the missed opportunity cost - the sales that would have been made if the mistake hadn't been made.


2. Keep the right people.


Top performers in any field have a set of needs that must be met. This class of team member can easily find others employers to offer them good terms. Top sales managers pay attention to the needs of top performers to maximise there tenure on the team and the value returned to the company.


3. Ensure that the teams profit and revenue targets are achieved.


This necessitates performance monitoring. It is usually based on the crudest criteria such as monthly profit contributed. If a sales manager does nothing more than collect performance data and represent it to each sales person on a regular basis, underperforming team members will feel obliged to justify their shortfall and explain how they plan to rectify their underperformance. Faced with the facts of their poor performance, they cannot help feeling pressed to redouble their efforts.

Keeping track of higher value sales and ensuring that everything that can be done, is being done is a time consuming aspect of sales management. This duty rests on top of gathering sales forecast and pipeline data, anticipating future shortfalls, and taking action to avert them.


4. Maximise the effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity of sales people and the team.
   1. Behaviour monitoring provides a means of comparing activity with performance. This could involve counting outbound telephone calls, the number of customer visits made, the number and value of quotes or proposals generated, or the total number of customer contacts made. Presenting sales people with behaviour data together with performance data motivates behavioural change.
   1. Identifying best practice and capturing it in a sales process framework can provide a means of improving the methods in use by all members of a sales team. The sales manager only has to point out the opportunity to conform to underperformers. Their awareness of there performance shortfall creates the motivation to pay attention and make better use of preferred methods.
   1. Coaching is something that many sales managers are expected to do naturally however, having the knowledge and experience may not be sufficient to impart it to others. A coach creates learning through attention to each persons needs. Sales managers must put results first. Communication with team members about operational issues takes priority. Coaching is squeezed and all too often squeezed out.
   1. Forethought, planning, and preparation precede all consistent success. Sales managers can facilitate practice by requiring sales people to trial run important sales meetings. As for coaching, this takes forethought, planning, and preparation by the sales manager. Good intentions are too often thwarted by the constant pressure of other priorities.
   1. Regular sales training inspires hard work, increases knowledge, challenges attitudes and raises motivation. Sales managers can create regular sales training sessions. With a little forethought, team member experience and knowledge can be employed to make sales training happen with minimal direction. Once again, doing so depends on forethought, planning, and preparation.
   1. Comparing performance data with that of similar competitors helps sales managers set or defend realistic productivity and performance targets. Benchmarking provides comparable measures of individual, team, and organisational efficiency.


This is a very broad task that can be addressed in the following ways :


5. Reporting or interpreting data for senior management.


While this function has more to do with strategic decision making than performance management, it forms an integral part of the picture because it has an impact on the resources that are made available to support sales target achievement.


6. Anticipating and planning for future external and internal changes.


The unexpected can deal a crippling blow to any enterprise. Sales managers must anticipate changes, in markets addressed, customer needs, product competitiveness, sales targets, and available resources and plan how to accommodate them while continuing to achieve the necessary sales results.

The new buzz phrase, 'Sales Performance Management' is associated with ongoing efforts to automate as much of the sales process as possible. Automation empowers sales teams to sell more with the same resources and thereby outperform competitors while continually improving stakeholder return.

Application developers still have plenty of potential for helping sales managers do their jobs more efficiently however; It will be a while before software can lessen the importance of sales management talent.

Related Articles
  Organizational Readiness To Performance Management
  Appealing As Part Of Performance Managment
  THREE FACTORS MAKE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT A SUCCESS
  Managing Employees Performance
  Successful Succession Planning - Driven By Managing Performance
  How to manage and motivate a team
  Designing A Performance Management System
  Sales Training for Senior Manager Performance Improvement
  Top Ten Tips About People Management
  TIME FOR BUDGETS BUT NO TIME FOR PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT!
  Management Skills That Drive Performance
  The overuse of "people" as competitive advantage
  How to Deal: Performance Reviews
  Reviewing The Perfomance Management Effectiveness
  How To Run A Staff Appraisal
  Here Is A Quick Way To Improve Your Performance Review
  High Performance
  Performance Management - Five Steps To Success
  Coaching the Sales Person
  Dropped Balls

Article Tags: business, interpersonal skills, management training, sales performance, sales training



Related Forum Posts
HRPreneur - Hi everyone, I am new to the forum and I recently started my own Human Capital (HR) consulting firm called HRPreneur Inc. HRP focuses on making human capital a strategic differentiator for SME's. Below is a summary about HRP; Who We Are: HRP is a Human Capital consulting firm with 30 years of experience that becomes an extension of your company by providing a full array of services to help you create a highly engaged workforce focused on achieving strategic results in order to build a long lasting great company! Mission: HRP provides small and medium sized businesses a Strategic HR Business Partner to increase employee engagement, resulting in cost savings, increased productivity and results at an affordable rate! Vision: To inspire and warrant SME's reach their full competency! Cost Effectiveness: We provide over 30 years of experience at a fraction of the cost at a strategic executive HR business level You will save between 50% to 60% in costs per year on salary, bonus, benefits, training, office space alone We will provide you additional cost efficiencies through our services Services: • Strategic Human Resources Planning • Organizational Redesign • Change Management • Organizational Culture Development • Employee Engagement Programs • Leadership Assessment and Development • Compensation Design • Talent Acquisition • Assimilation and On-Boarding • Performance Management • Talent Management & Succession Planning • Human Resources Due Diligence • Human Resources Audit • Full Service HR Outsourcing
No B.S. Time Management - A great book I read on Time Management is No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy.
ARTICLE: Performance coaching in the workplace - To create lasting performance change it is necessary to first understand the positive and negative influence that a person’s personal behaviors has on their execution and what impact these have on their ability to achieve success. Only when we fully understand a person’s behavioral patterns and create positive self-managing coaching strategies can we assist a person to create lasting performance change. The vast majority of employers believe coaching can deliver significant benefits to both individuals and organizations. The majority of employers plan to increase the use of coaching over the next few years, according to a new survey by the Institute of Personnel and Development. Nearly nine out of ten interviewed companies expect their managers and supervisors to deliver performance coaching as part of their day-to-day work. In another large industry-wide study it was found that most managers reported that they were confident in their ability to coach. However, the study also showed that the managers’ actual skills levels as coaches were typically poor. As a consequence they were not nearly as effective in their coaching as they believe themselves to be. Often times, they believed that coaching consisted of just providing 1-to-1 instructional feedback to their staff members on what to do in a given situation to perform better. Many recent studies have shown that technical skills only represent at best 20% of the contribution into our performance. The remaining 80% comes from our ability to choose or make a decision, assertiveness, commitment to grow, ability to concentrate, honesty, optimism, persistence, ability to perform well under stress and so on. These traits are commonly called our soft skills or attitude. Few managers understand just how deeply rooted their own behavior patterns are, let alone how to positively change them in other people. Performance coaching is frequently confused with other types of coaching, such as Executive coaching and Life coaching. Performance coaching is a form of Directive coaching. Executive coaching and Life coaching are both forms of Non-directive coaching. Directive coaching is usually more suitable for a manager who sometimes acts as a coach. Performance coaching in the workplace has developed immensely from what it was only 4 years ago. To choose the right coach will make a huge difference. You also better make sure to know what you want. If your coach knows what (s)he is doing – you will get on your way to get it! [i:38tu5pgr]- Peter J Karlsson[/i:38tu5pgr]
Which kind of industries are you interested in? - Ecological or E-business or Investment or Finance or Management or Non-Profit or Retailer or others.
Re: what position to request? - What do you think of: Executive Manager? Director of Product Management? I am not interested in working as a freelancer. As I mentioned, the purpose of what I am doing is to get involved into a startup that may become successful in the future. This is a situation when a group of people get together to launch something promising and invest into this their time and energy and even may be money.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

RULE YOUR BUSINESS LIKE A SHINE STAR

Resistance to Change and How to Deal With It

How to develop the best lateral thinking skills

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.