Successful program of sales intensification: Realization

The most difficult stage on the way of sales department reformation is the stage of sales intensification program implementation. Sales specialist quickly lose the interest to all additional analyzing, paper work and everything that can divert their attention from process of sales plan performance. Many projects or improvements of sales department suffer failure only because they do not meet enthusiasm of employees and do not bring fast financial results. Good program of changes should have support, first of all, of the top management and sales managers, and secondly, to have an accurate, unchangeable course on changes.

Sales managers should lead and guide this process, their recommendations should be taken into account. The best way to ensure an accurate orientation of the reformation program consists in creation of conclusive facts base that demonstrates influence of changes on the financial results. For example first stage of sales intensification program is the comparison of companies' results between competitors and defining of lags. Reasons of lags should be analyzed and taken into account during reformation.

First of all, it is necessary to allow sales agents to solve own problems independently. Usually they perfectly know these problems, but have no possibility or stimulus for their decision. One of the perfectly proved techniques of the program of sales intensification is the technology of "break-through". It is built on basis of the principle of sales employees involving into elaborating of recommendations for the problem-solving. For that purpose sales specialists come together for discussion of the problems of sales and quality of servicing increasing. At first the most important problems should be selected, that which are capable to affect the prompt achievement of results. The team of 8-10 agents analyzes these problems, develops recommendations about their solving and criteria of successful realization. Then the same team starts applying of the defined decisions and tracking the results.

Typical sales intensification program realization plan consist of the following steps:

Step 1. The primary goals of the stage are gathering of the base facts, comparison of sales efficiency between the company and competitors, creating of project team and revealing of leaders. During this stage the basic problems of the company and of the sales process defining and the changes directed on its optimization realizing.

Step 2. The pilot project. During the pilot project offered changes (reduction of paper work, redistribution of working hours and clients between agents etc.) are testing. The primary goal of the pilot project is testing or new process and preparation for its implementation in real-life environment.

Step 3. Expansion. It is carrying out by cycles of 6-8 weeks. During this stage sales agents elaborate the individual plans of action directed on increasing of their personal efficiency and defining target sales indicators.

Step 4. The control. It is necessary for results tracking of and motivation of employees.

Step 5. Strengthening of results. That means building of support systems, such as system of recruitment, training and system of employees' professional skill improvement, information and management systems.

Program of sales intensification is a project that can be managed with a help of project team management software. Sales team leader can use VIP Task Manager in order to set sales plans and operational measures to increase sales specialists' effectiveness and to motivate them according to obtained results. VIP Task Manager can be used as sales team tracking software that allows each sales team member to see and report sales plans regarding each type of product, clients, areas, project stages and so on, and various tasks that can be assigned to him/her by team leader. VIP Task Manager is collaboration software that allows sales team members simultaneously access the same database via LAN or Internet and report about their job progress, so the common project performance becomes visible and measurable .

VIP Task Manager is user friendly, intuitive, easy to use, and ideal for multiple user management and collaboration. Features include task/time planning, tracking and reporting, e-mail and in-system notifications, various charts and reports, access permissions, file sharing, scheduler (calendar), Task Tree view, customizable task attributes and workflow, data export to formats of MS Excel and HTML, import data from MS Outlook.

See also article about successful program of sales intensification