Archive for the ‘Salesperson Sourcing and Selection’ Category
No question – competent help is hard to find! If you want high performance sales coverage from independent reps, you have two challenges:
A. Finding and retaining high performance rep agencies that fit your targeted sales coverage; and
B. Providing productive management support that will maximize results without alienating your reps.
Before you lose the benefits available from independent reps – due to one or more bad experiences – consider the alternatives.
If you make an objective analysis, you’ll find that:
a) high performance sales coverage is available from independent reps, and that
b) the IRS will let you adequately manage your reps.
As you consider all your options, you will recognize that:
a) reps are a variable selling expense rather than primarily a fixed one, and
b) reps are paid after you get an order – sometimes after you’ve been paid for the order. In addition,
c) the right rep for your company will already have good relationships with most of your target accounts.
It’s a tough challenge to build and manage high performance sales coverage with any kind of sales force. Experience reveals that with productive upgrades in management style and recruiting effectiveness, companies can improve sales performance with either an employee sales force or with independent reps. In choosing your distribution channel strategy, remember that employee salespeople require a high pre-sale cash investment, thereby often creating a higher selling cost ratio.
So if your targeted territory potential and/or product technology doesn’t justify a full-time high performance salesperson, then you should definitely search for a high performance independent rep agency. To source and retain a high performance agency will require an “executive search” approach based on clearly defined rep performance specifications – as described in Knotes & Comments 303, “Applying Quality Assurance To Sourcing.”.
In addition, you’ll need to productively direct and manage your rep sales coverage, just as you should be productively directing and managing your employee sales force.
Limitations on sales management time, as well as development experience, prevent many companies from effectively meeting the above challenges. Sales management is busy creating and following up on proposals, talking with customers and reps, plus handling administrative duties. This leaves little time for thorough rep searches. In addition, when rep sourcing is a periodic duty, it’s hard to improve search techniques or strengthen evaluation skills. Of course there should be an infrequent need to replace salespeople or to open new territories.
There are numerous misconceptions about how much management reps will accept, and what the IRS will allow. Quite simply, you can specify target accounts, and you can direct your reps to qualify those accounts. The key to achieving this is to specify in your rep agreement that providing coverage to a list of targeted accounts is part of what you are contracting the rep agency to do.
In addition, you can require also require that your reps provide qualification status information on each account as outlined in Knotes & Comments 202, “Establishing Measurably to Enable Manageability”. You shouldn’t want to micro-manage the rep’s time by requiring call reports. Such micro-management isn’t productive for employee salespeople either. Again, for reps a description of your reporting requirements should be in the rep agreement/contract.
Your objective should be to develop a productive sales management strategy based on a contemporary quality management process. This means upgrading the effectiveness of sales direction and support into Sales Performance Quality Assurance™, which requires both process management knowledge and development time.
If you want/need profitable growth, consider a proven alternative. Establish a sales management program using process and quality management methods, and include steps for continuous improvement – as you do in all your product production QA processes. Process and quality management can be utilized in sales if you follow a few simple guidelines.
Recognize that any disappointments you have had in sourcing and managing rep agency coverage can be overcome using contemporary methods. This has been proven numerous times by companies serving a variety of diverse markets. Because sales is the lifeblood of any enterprise, Sales Performance Quality Assurance™ is a well justified investment. For additional insights into investing in sales coverage assets, ask for Knotes & Comments 301, the free bulletin on ”The Salesperson As A Human Resources Investment,” and Knotes & Comments 303, “Applying Quality Assurance to Sourcing.”
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You’re looking for more and better salespeople, because you want more and higher profit sales volume. You may not realize it, but you have two challenges:
1. Providing a good earnings opportunity to a new salesperson.
2. Sourcing and selecting high performance salespeople
The first challenge is first – for a reason. You can’t attract high performance salespeople if you don’t have a high productivity earnings opportunity. This means, in essence, providing effective sales support. You don’t do this because your salespeople are lazy, you provide support to make your salespeople more efficient. (Providing sales support gives you more control over the sales message and process.) See the April 6th comment on, “Achieving Effective Sales Management”
To find more effective salespeople, you have to know what you’re looking for. This means establishing a specification based job description. You have to know what you want your salespeople to do, and you have to have a way to measure both potential (for candidates) and performance (for your salespeople).
Finding more effective salespeople also means using an executive search process to find and evaluate candidates. This is necessary whether you’re seeking an employee salesperson or an independent rep agency. For more details, see the pages under Salesperson Sourcing and Selection on this site.