Management

9 Key Steps to Sales Compensation Design

Are your sales low? Margins thin? Do you experience high turn over in your sales department? Worse yet, do you tend to attract and keep low-performers? Have you considered you sales compensation plan as a cause for some of your problems? If you haven’t, you should. One point before we get started: Sales compensation plans are not a substitute for good sales management. You need to have both. Here are nine keys to properly designing a sales compensation plan: Assess your needs. How effective is your existing plan? Is...

Managing the Time of your Life

By John Kypriotakis

If your answer to “How are you?” seems to always be “BUSY”, this may be a good time to take a closer look at your most valuable resource. How can you make sure that “busy” also means productive? How can you take control of your time? First make the decision that now is the time and commit to the following: Your time audit When it comes to planning, there is only one thing worse than not knowing where you are going, and that is to not know where you...

Get closer to your customers…

By John Kypriotakis

Encouraging the involvement of your whole organization in your marketing, selling and customer service efforts has this as one of its many positive results: the more integrated you become with your customer’s organization the more solid the relationship will be. The basic premise is that the more time you and your customers invest in understanding how to best work together, integrating processes, and developing effective communication channels for mutual feedback, the less likely they will be to switch suppliers when otherwise might be tempted to do so. This is...

Marketing in Tough Times

By John Kypriotakis

… and one from the archives. I wrote this article a few years ago and even though the examples are a bit old, all of the principles are relevant and apply just as well today. ———- The effects of the severe economic downturn have been felt throughout the marketplace. This has lead to problems for companies in most industries, your customers included. All indicators to date show that we may not see significant improvement anytime soon. Times are still tough.So, what does your company do when the going gets...

Doing More with Less…

By John Kypriotakis

Lately I’ve been feeling like the less I do, the more I actually get done. Allow me to explain. Real quick though, let me just check some e-mail messages that came in as I was writing this. Actually, while I’m at it, now is probably a good time to take a peek at my Twitter feed (Cool – 4 RTs!). And I’ll sign in on Facebook, too. You know, just in case a client decided to “friend” me or something. Anyways, where were we? Oh wait, one more thing,...

Marketing: The first few baby steps

By John Kypriotakis

I guess any marketing effort, compared to no marketing at all, is a step in the right direction. But that having been said, for marketing to be most effective it has to be part of a “bigger” picture, congruent with the goals of the organization and an integral part of any other sales efforts in the marketplace. So, what’s next? We’ll address the first few steps here, with more to come in future posts. First action item is to decide what you want to accomplish through your marketing efforts. You need...

Compensation Design: Define the sales rep’s role

By John Kypriotakis

So what is new in the world of sales compensation? In a way the more things change, the more they stay the same. Fundamentals don’t change and as such they are always a good place to start. There are at least nine components to successful sales compensation design. There is a post (9 Key Steps to Sales Compensation Design) that lists these steps for your reference. In this post we will examine Key Step #3 “Define the sales reps’ role” in greater detail. As you approach your new sales plan design,...

Sales Channel Management

By John Kypriotakis

What is “sales channel management,” and how can we implement it in an effective manner? Before we get too far into this discussion, let’s first identify the exact meaning of the word “channel” (courtesy of www.dictionary.com): A course or pathway through which information is transmitted. A route of communication or access. Often used in the plural. That through which anything passes; means of passing, conveying, or transmitting. For the purposes of our discussion, let’s define “sales channel(s)” as “the means through which we convey (and receive) sales related information.” ...

Can you hear me now?

By John Kypriotakis

“Can you hear me now? No? Really? How about now, better? Ok, hold on, ahmmm, how about now? Oh good, ok, so, what I was trying to say… ” No, this is not a new take on an old commercial. It was actually an attempt at a conversation I happened to overhear while waiting for a cup of coffee at a convention hall’s concession stand. There are so many points to be made about the “appropriateness” of this call but let’s focus on this: When making a call, especially...

Sales Force Dynamics: Instituting an Ideal Compensation Plan

By James Roumeliotis

Sales compensation is a crucial factor in motivation. It is the sales executive’s best strategic tool to drive sales performance and motivate specific selling behaviors. When designing sales compensation plans, one of the most important steps is to identify the appropriate measures on which your sales representatives will be paid. A combination of salary, commission and bonus is usually most effective. The question then becomes how to successfully blend all three that will entice achievers, as well as reward them according to performance. Nevertheless, the plan needs to be...

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Management

9 Key Steps to Sales Compensation Design

Managing the Time of your Life

Get closer to your customers…

Marketing in Tough Times

Doing More with Less…

Marketing: The first few baby steps

Compensation Design: Define the sales rep’s role

Sales Channel Management

Can you hear me now?

Sales Force Dynamics: Instituting an Ideal Compensation Plan

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