Salespeople Mind Their Own Business

Office World News, Jan/Feb 2004 by Saviano, Neil

Sales force automation software helps greatly in managing and monitoring salespeople within their personal marketing plan process. Within the software activities are coded and identified and can be measured in terms of not only number of activities, but in terms of effective ratios for success as well. In many instances, sales force automation software is connected to back- end industry software, thus providing additional customer metrics such as percentage of business obtained per customer and missing business from specific product areas. This entire sales training model strongly enhances salesperson accountability - a void evident in most sales organizations.

Sales training is an important company investment. It doesn't need to be a nebulous attempt to propel a salesperson to greater heights in a short period of time. Sales training must encompass a holistic approach that brings together technique with a market and business planning process at the salesperson level. Training must be ongoing and, as related above, the process must be a microcosm of the process at the company level. It's really about the transformation of the salesperson into a businessperson.

An industry veteran with more than 30 year's experience, Neil Saviano is president of Longbow Consulting Group, a sales and marketing organization that focuses on helping office products dealers combine proven sales and marketing techniques and strategies with state-of-the-art sales ' force automation solutions. he can be reached by phone at 978-750-6882 or by e-mail at neil@longbowcg.com. Dealers can also visit Longbow's website at www.longbowcg.com.