In economically uncertain times, many businesses are turning to their sales departments to increase revenue by capturing new clients and increasing market share. However, being able to effectively manage and direct a successful sales team can sometimes be difficult.
As Katherine Graham-Leviss points out in her article, “Tips to Manage a Successful Sales Team,” many of the qualities that make for a successful salesperson do not necessarily make for someone who is easy to manage. Successful salespeople often have strong personalities; they tend to be big picture people, who are persuasive and charismatic. The flip side of those characteristics is that salespeople can often also be impulsive, disorganized and lack attention to detail.
The result in many sales departments is a great deal of conflict between sales agents and managers. The question is, how can one effectively encourage these characteristics that make salespeople successful, while managing the inherent flip side of those qualities that make day to day operations more difficult?
Graham-Leviss says that most successful salespeople want autonomy. They want the ability to make their own decisions and come up with creative solutions to problems. They need managers who coach and offer suggestions, rather than order and demand.
For many companies, a useful way to manage sales as well as give salespeople greater autonomy is to move some aspects of management to your website. This makes it easier for managers to track performance, and makes it easier for sales agents to operate independently, while still adhering to company guidelines.
The Upshot Commerce Sales Team Management and Compensation Extension provides you with all the tools you need to provide variable compensation and performance tracking for your sales team from orders placed on your online store. Some highlighted features to this extension include:
- Multi-Level Commission Structure
Create unique commission groups to assign your agents. Each commission group can have its own payment structure. This enables you to reward “high performers”, “managers and executives”, or even create “special term bonus” agents. - Extensive Reports and Graphs
Run reports and graphs with the Sales Team Extension, from very broad metrics to detailed specifics, to monitor your sales team sales and customer orders. - Dynamic Agent Mapping
Agents can be manually attached to a customer or dynamically with an agent selection list in your storefront registration pages.
All of these features mean a much more streamlined process for your sales team, freeing up your managers to focus on motivating and driving sales, rather than filling out forms and structuring company policy.
The Sales Team Management Extension is available to users of the Upshot Commerce Core Platform for a monthly fee of $50 with 5 user profiles included (additional users can be added as well, each one adding an additional $10 month)