Unlocking Success: Crafting a Winning Sales Performance Improvement Plan

It's a well-accepted fact that sales performance is crucial for organizational development. 

Organizations that look into their sales force’s well-being regularly do yield the benefits that a healthy, satisfied, and motivated workforce has to offer. 

These initiatives include proper onboarding, regular sales performance analysis, consistent sales coaching, and other employee-centric approaches. 

A structured onboarding and sales performance enhancement program can improve employee engagement, retention, and commitment to the job and organization cost-effectively. 

More than hiring new talents, retaining and improving the existing workforce to meet the demands of the growing company and changing scenarios is effective.

Now all these insights bring us to one single point- the need for a well-planned and strategic sales improvement plan. 

This article takes you through understanding what is a sales performance improvement plan, strategies to improve sales performance, the importance of monitoring and tracking sales improvement, and the need for implementing continuous training and development.

So let's delve into these topics. 

What is a Sales Performance Improvement Plan?

The sales performance improvement plan outlines the strategic approach underperforming salesforce has to incorporate to bring in their best performance. 

It details the areas of improvement that the salesperson has to focus on as well as provides the required training, tools, and resources to upskill and improve their performance. 

It consists of goals and targets that the salesperson has to achieve within a time period while providing the roadmap and guidance to reach these levels of expectations. 

In short, a sales performance improvement plan helps the salesforce to understand their weak areas, guide them to attain their optimal potential and provide a sense of direction towards sales and customer planning.

To read more about sales performance, check A Complete Guide to Execution Of Sales Performance Management

Strategies to Improve Sales Performance

Sales effectiveness improvement can be strategized on two levels. 

One, by improving your individual workforce talent, and two by ensuring the working environment is conducive for positive results. 

Now let's understand these two levels of boosting sales performance and optimizing the sales pipeline funnel.

1. Hire the right talent

Hiring the right talent will reduce your workload by half. Companies must be looking for candidates who understand your product or service, can communicate their ideas well with the client, build relationships and networks, generate leads, and achieve their quotas, aligning with the company's sales branding image.

2. Provide a good onboarding experience

You can't expect your employees to be high performing from day one. To reach that state of high performance and achievement, the organization itself must work towards molding them. A good onboarding program can bring a sense of belonging, commitment, and engagement to the company which will positively impact their performance. 

3. Regularly analyze their performance

The workforce will understand what they are lagging in only when there is someone to point it out and guide them to improvement. Hence, managers must spend time regularly analyzing their sales performance. With sales performance management tools, managers can provide data-based, insightful feedback that can help the salesforce improve effectively. 

4. Consistent sales coaching sessions

Sales coaching sessions are one-to-one meetings between a sales manager and their rep. Here the manager can point out the setbacks and suggest improvements in an individual and more effective manner. Regular sales coaching also improves the confidence and performance levels of the salesforce contributing to better results. 

5. Get salesforce feedback

Improvement comes not just by providing all the tools, resources, and opportunities for the salesforce. It also comes from listening to the salesforce of their needs, requirements, and problems. Getting feedback from the salesforce on their job and the ground reality helps formulate better and more effective sales strategies, including sales nudges, to improve their performance.. 

Now these are individual techniques to improve the salesforce performance. Let's see how in a general sense, organizational-level sales performance improvement tips. 

6. Keep a close eye on the market

Organizations must keep a close eye on the market and understand its growth potential. There are seasons when your product or service is not selling, there might be territories where there is immense potential and areas where it doesn't work. 

All these external factors also affect the poor performance of the salesforce. Companies must take into consideration these external factors while analyzing sales performance and strategizing the sales process. 

7. Set goals and quotas

Salesforce can better prepare and perform when they have a sense of direction of the work and expectations out of it. Setting realistic goals and quotas based on the salesforce potential that can motivate and keep them focused will help increase sales performance.

8. Incorporate digital tools 

Digital tools help managers understand their salesforce potential, suggest areas of improvement, and effectively boost sales performance. They provide data-driven insights that can effectively be incorporated into sales operations for expected and positive outcomes. The integration of a sales lift calculation further refines these insights, offering a precise measure of performance enhancement and aiding in strategic decision-making.

9. Incentive Compensation

Sales and incentives are synonymous. The effectiveness of sales compensation in improving salesforce performance and increasing sales is proven time and again. Hence, companies must invest time and effort in building an effective incentive compensation management platform that can bring the desired results from their sales team. This platform streamlines the process of designing, implementing, and monitoring incentive programs, ensuring alignment with business objectives and maximizing sales team motivation and productivity. 

10. Revise sales strategy regularly 

Sales strategies are not tailor-made for all nor are they effective for all times. Hence, organizations must rework their sales strategies and process time and again, depending on the sales team, market status, customer behavior, product upgrade, etc. 

Effective sales strategies can boost sales performance immensely. To ensure and enhance such desired results, organizations must invest ample time, resources, and thought in planning, designing, building, and implementing these strategies in business operations. 

For further reading, click How to Improve Sales Performance for Your Business & Drive Revenue

Conclusion

A sales performance improvement plan is a helpful approach for salesforce in understanding their weakness, setting sales improvement goals, and working towards improving their skills and potential. Incorporating a Sales pipeline calculator to track and measure progress enhances the systematic approach and provides a quantitative assessment, informing targeted training initiatives for more effective development strategies for the sales team.

From an organizational level, monitoring and tracking sales improvement and implementing continuous training and developmental programs ensure that the workforce finds opportunities for growth and career advancement. The incorporation of tools such as the Win percentage calculator enhances this process, offering a quantitative assessment of sales performance that can inform targeted training initiatives, enabling more effective development strategies for the sales team.

It is without doubt that an organization that invests in their employee's growth and well-being will always be returned with trust and commitment. 

Providing transparency and clarity in business operations is also another step that defines an organization and its integrity. 

Especially with the salesforce, this accountability comes in the way the incentive compensation plan is managed. 

Kennect runs your sales compensation programs in cruise mode to create transparency and achieve operational efficiency.