Sales force effectiveness
improvement systems
Optimising sales force effectiveness ensures that the investment
the organisation makes in its sales force is maximised. Unsurprisingly,
all our clients share a desire to achieve this!
Meridian is focused on the objective measurement of the impact
of various investments made by the sales function. No single element
works alone; there is an interdependency of relationships. These
interdependencies need first to be understood and then tracked
and analysed. In simple terms:
- Are we engaging the sales force with the right
customers?
- Are they performing the right tasks as effectively
as they could?
- Is their selling time being maximised?
Where Meridian has helped clients design and implement systems
to measure the above elements, management has been able to track
the performance of individuals, teams, divisions and countries
and benchmark performance. Significant insight has been generated
enabling objective analysis of the relative performance of various
investments. This insight then allows management to greatly reduce
the risk involved in ‘placing bets’ on investments
in the sales function and ultimately in customers.
With the use of such an approach, and given a discretionary lump
sum to invest in the sales function, managers know where to invest
to achieve the greatest uplift in profitable revenue. Ultimately,
they can answer the question; “Is it better to invest in
training, recruit more sales people, offer a larger trade discount
or run a trade related marketing event to grow the ‘top
line’?”.
