Learn More About Sales Performance Management Software
Who Uses Sales Performance Management Software?
Sales management: The managers and other leaders within a sales department hire and train the best salespeople, and then monitor their work, making adjustments where necessary. This software leverages user-friendly visuals to track achievements and efficiency throughout the sales department. With these tools, administrators can use their preferred method of tracking performance on a daily basis. These metrics, paired with personal interactions and performance reviews, helps managers make educated decisions about who to promote, how to distribute compensation, and which employees need coaching or other assistance.
Smaller sales teams will often take a more hands-on approach to performance monitoring since each closed deal (or lack thereof) has greater visibility and a more direct impact on the company.
However, as a sales team grows, it can be difficult to know how each sales representative is performing. Sales performance management tools offer managers convenience and real-time insights and automation with summaries about individual performance, and visibility into the sales team’s performance as a group. With this knowledge, managers can get a sense of how employees and the entire team are driving sales, and how they need to adjust their strategy. This relates to employee recognition and compensation as well as the entire sales model. To keep up with the competition, modern sales teams may regularly adjust their approach based on the performance of sales representatives. These tools help track performance data with minimal effort, so managers can spend more time building out strategies and ramping up employees.
Sales representatives: The data and insights generated by these platforms are significantly valuable to employees, and not just the management team directing their operation. In many cases, these products put team success into perspective so employees can have an idea of their standing. With these timely insights, sales representatives know when they need to accelerate their efforts to keep up with the rest of their team. On the flip side, when high performers notice their colleagues falling behind in their sales numbers or work rate, they can offer personalized coaching or collaboration.
Sales performance management software often shares features with sales gamification software. While comparing an individual’s performance to the rest of a team can be a source of stress, it can also drive camaraderie and friendly competition while improving business outcomes. These tools can help put sales efforts and achievements in perspective alongside a salesperson’s teammates. This adds an engaging new dimension to the daily grind of selling a product or service, as representatives routinely take note of their performance metrics and work together to continuously improve.
Software Related to Sales Performance Management Software
Successful selling, especially in a modern organization, involves a wide variety of techniques and solutions that transform the sales department into an efficient machine. The following solutions relate to sales performance management software and ensure these teams have maximum impact on the organization.
Sales enablement software: This software gives sales representatives tools to succeed and play an invaluable role in their performance numbers, especially as a brand evolves along with its products and services. Sales enablement software offers sales team members an accessible repository of marketing collateral, product knowledge, and sales scripts to use in their daily activities. This content can be used for a variety of purposes, from personal studying to sharing during customer meetings. The correct content at the right time can make or break a sales deal, whether referencing a playbook for the optimal response or providing a one-sheet description of a product or feature. Managers and team leaders populate and organize this content so it’s searchable from employee computers and sometimes mobile devices. Customer engagement with different pieces of content can be tracked within certain platforms to help managers refine their content over time. Sales enablement platforms are a valuable supplement to employee training or coaching programs, for both teachers and trainees.
Sales engagement software: Sales engagement software helps modern sales teams perform their jobs at a higher level, from prospect to close, by integrating communication channels into a central platform for optimal customer interactions. Salespeople can leverage these tools to streamline their daily conversations and ensure the right message is delivered at the right time in a customer lifecycle. This could entail suggested workflows and communication sequences, along with intelligent email templates, call scripts, and other capabilities. These platforms often measure the effectiveness of different messaging and selling tactics and then make timely suggestions for what has the highest chance of success during a specific moment in the customer relationship. This technology helps salespeople continuously refine their approach, and as a result, they can drive better results with their customers.
Sales training providers: A sales team’s performance is tied to the quality of their training. It begins when they are hired, but might require continued effort throughout their tenure at the company. To supplement internal employee training processes, a company might consider enlisting the help of a third-party resource. Sales training providers offer a wide spectrum of learning services tailored to the needs of sales departments, from basic sales tactics to advanced training around complex customer scenarios. If certain employees are struggling when selling a product or service, hiring a sales training provider can help them reach the preferred level of mastery for a business. Working with a sales training team that provides continued education to an entire sales department is also a reasonable alternative. It is important for sales managers and business owners to recognize when outside help may be the correct move for improving sales performance or learning how to handle high-level sales situations.
Challenges with Sales Performance Management Software
Although sales performance management software is a game changer, it is not without issues:
Complexity: Learning how to use a new solution, especially ones as robust and comprehensive as sales performance systems, can be a daunting task to already busy managers. This software has tons of functionalities, and although they greatly optimize the sales process over time, integrating the tools into daily activities is not a task to be underestimated.
How to Buy Sales Performance Management Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Sales Performance Management Software
In order to select the best sales performance management software, companies must begin with developing a long list based on features that are the most important for the business. The next step is filtering the options based on nice-to-haves and any requirements unique to one’s company, industry, or internal policies.
Compare Sales Performance Management Software Products
Create a long list
To create a list of the initial selection, buyers may consider the following:
- Purchasing and licensing cost
- Ease of the product’s integration with existing company technologies and operating procedures
- Security and safety of data
- Scalability, i.e., if the tool matches the size of the company, as well as the projected size of the company if it is growing
Create a short list
The purpose of the long list is to quickly identify a handful of optimal solutions for one’s software needs. However, the short list takes into account more advanced screening criteria to create a candidate pool for product demonstrations and, ultimately, a final decision. The following criteria are worth considering during this phase of the selection process:
- Large sales cloud with a sales performance management module vs. a standalone software (if the business is in need of the features of a large sales cloud in addition to sales performance management, the former option may be ideal, however, a specific tool may be appropriate if the business takes care of those needs with other technologies)
- Ease of use and special features accompanying the product
- Availability of sales coaching as a feature of the product
Conduct demos
Once the short list has been created, the next step is to seek out product demonstrations from potential vendors. It is important to have thought leaders and IT personnel during these demonstrations to ask thoughtful and tech-specific questions to obtain a holistic view of how the sales performance management system works and would look integrated into the company’s day-to-day activities.
Selection of Sales Performance Management Software
Choose a selection team
A cross-functional team of C-suite executives, IT, accounting, and high-ranking sales managers should be part of the selection process. C-suite will act as key decision makers, but the other departments are equally as important. IT teams will be able to provide recommendations based on their technical skills and knowledge, accounting teams will be able to speak to internal finances and budget, and upper-level sales managers can provide insight into what features and products would work best on teams.
Negotiation
Negotiation is a crucial part of the decision-making process. Buyers must understand that vendors will be bringing their strongest team members to seal the deal. To combat the persuasiveness of this team, the buyers must cover the following points: cost, terms and conditions, implementation, legal and contracts, features, and hidden costs and fees.
Final decision
Once the pros and cons have been weighed, dimensions from the short and long list have been evaluated, product demonstrations have occurred, and in-depth conversations both internally and externally have finished, it’s time to make the decision. Ideally, an organization will purchase a product that maximizes the business’ needs with potential downsides of using that software.
