CHAPTER 9

Controlling Sales
Personnel

Copyright © 2010 Pearson Professor Dr. Afjal Hossain, Department of Marketing, PSTU.
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 1-1
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Richard d lrwin 9-1
 Chapter Outline
• Standards of performance, relation of performance
• Standard to personal selling
• Objectives, evaluating and comparing actual
performance with standards
• Controlling sales personnel through supervision
• Twenty better ways to handle complaints and arguments

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 Sales Personnel Evaluation

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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance
Standards-
• Quota is a quantitative
objective expressed in
absolute terms and
assigned to a specific
marketing unit.
• The terms can be Value or
product units .
• Quotas specify desired
levels of achievement for
sales volume, gross
margin, net profit,
performance of non
selling activities.

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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance
Standards-
• Control the relation of
selling expenses to sales
volume .
• Determined after analysis
of expense conditions &
sales volumes potential in
each territory.
• Can be affected by controlling expenses or improving sales
• Does not take into account variations in the profitability of different
products .
• More popular in industrial selling where greater focus is on
Personal selling & entertainment of customers.

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Richard d lrwin
© 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 1-6
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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance
Standards-
• Needs for selling a
balanced line & for
considering relative
profitability (Different
Products or Individual
Customers).
• Focus on more profitable products & devote more time & effort to
potential accounts
• Neglect the solicitation i.e. request, of new accounts or
performance of new products.
• It is also known as gross margin ratio.

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Richard d lrwin
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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance
Standards-
• Market share on a
Territory-by- Territory
basis
• Target Market share
percentages are set for
each territory
• Comparison are made on basis of Industry sales

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Richard d lrwin
© 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 1-8
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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance
Standards-
• Thoroughness with which
a sales person works in
the assigned Territory
• Consists of the ratio of the
number of customers to
total prospects in a
territory

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Richard d lrwin
© 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 1-9
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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance Standards-

• Dividing the number of sales calls on a particular class of

customers by number of customers in that class
• Directs the selling effort to more profitable accounts

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Richard d lrwin
© 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall 1-10
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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance Standards-

• Standards for calls are set up individually for different territories,

taking into account territorial differences as to customer density,
road & traffic conditions and competitor's practices

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Richard d lrwin
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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance Standards-

• Effectiveness of sales person in securing orders

• Dividing number of orders secured by number of calls made

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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance Standards-

• Controls the frequency of calls on different accounts

• Different standards for different sizes & classes of customers

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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance Standards-

• Standards for non selling activities such as obtaining dealer

displays, cooperative advertising contracts, training distributor’s
personnel, and goodwill calls on distributor’s customers

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Richard d lrwin
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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…
Quantitative Performance Standards-

• Widespread practice to assign multiple quantitative performance

standards.

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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…

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 Sales Personnel Evaluation:
Cont’d…

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 Standards of performance,
relation of performance
• Standards of performance is the planned achievement levels that
the firm expects to reach throughout the year.
• It should be-
– Equitable and reasonable
– Varied
– Critical to success on the job
– Based on inputs and outputs (outcomes)
• Relation of performance include the followings-
– Measure inputs (efforts, number of sales calls, number of proposals …)
– Measure outputs (sales, profitability)
– The outcome-based perspective looks at outputs only
– The behavioral-based perspective consists of measuring both inputs and
outputs.

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 Standards of performance, relation
of performance: cont’d…

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 Standards of performance, relation
of performance: cont’d…
Possible actions-
• Take “NO action”.
• Take ACTION aimed to increase the degree of
attainment of objectives.
• REVISE the policy or plan or the strategies to attain
objectives.
• To LOWER or RAISE the objectives.

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 Standard to personal selling
• Standard to personal selling facilitate the measurement of
progress made toward company objectives.
• Specific objectives vary with changes in the company’s marketing
situation, but are reconcilable with the general objectives of
volume, profit, and growth.
• Performance standards are then established for the business as
a whole and, ultimately, for each salesperson.
• These standards are used to gauge the extent of achievement of
general and related specific objectives.

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Richard d lrwin
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 Objectives, evaluating and comparing
actual performance with standards

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Richard d lrwin
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 Controlling sales personnel
through supervision
• Supervision is generally used today to refer to time spent working
with employees to be certain they are aware of the
responsibilities of their job & to perform them correctly
• Because of the independent nature of the sales job, most of the
supervisory activities sales managers engage in occur when they
are working with new hires
• It is a simple but potentially time consuming task that should not
be taken lightly , as it is a critical element of sales manager’s
responsibility
• Supervision was an important element in managers position
when “management” was first studied, and it continue to be in the
21th century although the term supervision is seldom heard
today!

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Richard d lrwin
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 Controlling sales personnel
through supervision: cont’d…
• Supervising people performing new tasks include the following-
 Observe
 Offer suggestions & feedback
 Assist
 Time for “Hands on”
 Coaching
 Counseling
 Helping to answer questions & handle objections
• Sometimes sales managers don’t supervise new hires, more
experienced sales personnel do “delegation”, who can be
referred to as a first line manager in some companies
• Technology (CRM) is another source of supervisory assistance,
to track an employee’s daily activities, how an employee is
progressing, achieving his/her objectives during the call, using
his/her time wisely….

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 Twenty better ways to handle
complaints and arguments
1. Find out if general enquiries are being logged as complaints
2. Empower the front line to feedback (and up) about what isn’t working
3. Redesign your complaints training so everyone gets it right from day one
4. Nominate “complaint buddies” to help departments communicate
5. Tell your customers’ individual stories in the boardroom
6. Save time and money by empowering agents to issue immediate refunds
7. Hold individuals accountable for escalating calls
8. Ease the pressure by setting realistic expectations for your customers
9. Gather once a month to discuss what isn’t working
10. Swap your complaints email address for a complaints form
11. Make sure “customers come first” is a clear focus at all levels
12. Target on First Contact Resolution (FCR) to break the habit of call escalation
13. Give everyone the information they need to do their job properly
14. Put adaptive processes in place to help you adapt to changing customer needs
15. Tie key metrics together across different departments
16. Don’t be too strict with your reason codes
17. Make it easy for your customers to complain
18. Establish which agents are generating the most complaints
19. Give your complaints team control of social media
20. Don’t prioritize one channel over another

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 Thank You…….
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