Not every salesperson has the same style. While some view sales as fast-paced with deals happening on the fly others prefer to cultivate relationships between leads in order to turn them into long-term customers. With these varying styles, employers may ask themselves whether they consider sales to be a marathon or a sprint.
The case for a marathon
There are good arguments for taking the sales process slowly to get the most of out a business-customer relationship. When salespeople take the time to build a good rapport with customers, they may continue to do business with a company even during an economic downturn, which may help sustain long-term growth.
Those in the “sales is a marathon” camp have an in-depth understanding of the sales pipeline, carefully taking leads from the very first step to closing to follow-up. Companies measuring sales effectiveness metrics like quote-to-close ratio could see more new prospects and customers over the long term.
The great thing about viewing sales as a marathon is salespeople are able to convert leads not only into customers but customers for life.
Sprinting could generate more revenue
On the other hand, staff who consistently close deals quickly may bring in more revenue through short but sweet sales. Companies looking at sales as a spring could see their key performance indicators, such as sales per rep, rise rapidly as they aim to foster a healthy sense of competition among the workforce. Making sure salespeople meet short-term goals could be beneficial for company growth especially if they are looking into experimenting with new product lines or services. Employee performance could also be measured based on product performance to determine which products are selling well.
Compensation affected by short and long goals
Whether they think sales should be a short- or long-distance race, employers need to think about how incentive compensation will play a role in the game.
Before establishing incentives for performance, companies need to set their objectives for sales targets, employee productivity rates and other goals for different aspects of the business cycle. In order to reward employees for achieving these targets, however, managers need to be able to accurately determine their employees’ performance levels. Through tracking worker sales achievements through sales performance management solutions, companies can determine whether workers are that much closer to achieving their established targets.
After having the software to precisely monitor performance, companies need to make sure their incentive compensation structure will satisfy salespeople’s desire for competition as well as provide rewards and recognition.
Depending on the style and qualities of their sales staff, employers may need to look into offering short-term and long-term bonuses and other forms of incentive compensation.
One-time sales
There are some sales strategies that revolve around finding new clients quickly. Those perfectly suited for these types of strategies are salespeople who are skilled at locating leads and closing on sales that are either one-time or infrequent. To motivate these types of sales staff who are often nicknamed “hunters,” employers should provide rewards in the form of bigger commissions on sales.
Long-term sales
With other workers, a good customer relationship is key to increases in company revenue. Salespeople who are adept at upselling or maintaining relationships may seek out recognition for good customer satisfaction. They also may want to see rewards tied to revenue per customer.
With the pros and cons of looking at sales as a marathon or a spring, companies need to evaluate the qualities of their sales team and find out if their rewards are tailored to their sales style and achievements.
