SMP#8 Report: Evaluating Sales Force Performance Effectiveness

This report, labeled SMP#8, delves into the critical aspects of sales force effectiveness. It begins by outlining three key measures for assessing sales force performance: communicating expectations, predicting future sales growth, and implementing a sales performance management cycle. The report emphasizes the importance of these measures, explaining their role in understanding employee responsibilities, predicting future sales, and ensuring consistent quality. Furthermore, the report explores ten distinct purposes of evaluating salesperson performance, such as determining training needs, making decisions about promotions, and setting future sales targets. It highlights how each purpose influences the evaluation process and contributes to overall sales organization effectiveness, along with relevant references to support the findings.

Running head: SMP#8
SMP#8
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[DATE]
[Company name]
[Company address]

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Part A: Fully describe three (3) measures for assessing the effectiveness of a salesforce as a
whole. Explain why they’re important, what they determine, and how sales managers apply these
criteria to sales force performance evaluations.
Answer A
Measurement of sales force effectiveness is an important task for the sales manager in an
organization. If the manager does not measure the right things at the right time, the organization
will miss the opportunities of making improvements in the effectiveness of the team, which will
ultimately lead to the loss of revenue. The measures that will be adopted by the manager for the
effectiveness of sales force are –
Communicate the expectations
It is very important to measure the performance of sales employee so that they will understand
their job responsibilities, by increasing the competency. (Atkinson,2017)it is the human tendency
that they don’t respect what you expect but they respect what you inspect. (MacKenzie,2014)
The first way is to communicate the expectations to the salespeople that what the organization
wants from them. The performance should not be measured just for punishing the team , but it
will do in the way that it will recognize the performance of the employee , and helps the sales
employee in a positive way , in terms of reinforcement in the behaviour.
Prediction of growth in future sales
The assessment will also be done in the way of prediction in the future sales. The sales team has
to be aware of the fact that what future growth the company wants in the coming months or
years. The manager by doing this allows the salesperson to assess its performance on its own,
and provide them with the ability that he or she is competent in the task or not. (Chonko, 2016)
Afterwards, the manager has to assess the sales done by every individual and if the performance

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is not according to the competency the sales manager has to provide them with training, which
will enhance the effectiveness of the employee.
Sales performance management cycle
The next step is the sales performance management cycle in which the manager will
communicate the standards in terms of quality to the sales force. (Morris,2016)The manager has
to conduct the meetings with the sales force on the regular basis to judge the sales quality of each
and every individual by taking reviews from the customers, in terms of sales effectiveness and
the overall knowledge of the product. This process helps the managers in making their
salespeople more professional and productive, in terms of leading and operating in an external
environment.
Part B: Discuss ten (10) different purposes of an evaluation of salesperson performance and how
each purpose affects the performance evaluation process.
Answer B:
The different purposes of evaluation of salesperson performance are-
 It is important for the organization to evaluate the performance of the sales employees on
a frequent basis so that the organization will be able to know the effectiveness of the
particular employee in particular domain (Piercy,2017).
 It is of utmost importance to monitor the performance of the employees and ensure that
the employees are working according to the goals and objectives of the organization.
 For keeping the track of the progress of the salespeople the manager has to timely
evaluate the performance so that the training will be provided in the areas of lacking.

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 For taking the decisions regarding transfer, promotion and compensation the manager has
to evaluate the performance of the salesforce so that as per the effectiveness of work the
compensations and bonus will be provided to the individuals.
 For determining the training and counselling needs of the individual the manager has to
timely evaluate the performance so that training will be provided to those individuals
who are not working according to the set standards.
 The sales performance evaluation also provides a framework for the effective human
resource planning, as the performance evaluation process will help the manager in
knowing the demands of the human force on the basis of ineffectiveness of the existing
people in sales.
 It also helps in setting the standards for the next target sales by measuring the
performance of the existing manpower with the set standards of the organization, and on
that basis, the planning for the next target standards will be determined by the manager
(Babakus,2016).
 It helps in motivating the salespeople.
 It also helps in enhancement of communication between the sales manager and the
salesperson by knowing the inefficiency in the working and the valid reason behind it.
 An effective performance evaluation process will help in enhancing the performance of
the employee as the employee is aware of the fact that the working should be done
according to the set targets otherwise the disciplinary action will be taken against them
for their inefficiency.

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References
MacKenzie, S. B., Podsakoff, P. M., & Fetter, R. (2014). Organizational citizenship behaviour
and objective productivity as determinants of managerial evaluations of salespersons'
performance. Organizational behaviour and human decision processes, 50(1), 123-150.
Atkinson, A. A., Waterhouse, J. H., & Wells, R. B. (2017). A stakeholder approach to strategic
performance measurement. Sloan management review, 38(3), 25.
Chonko, L. B., Loe, T. N., Roberts, J. A., & Tanner, J. F. (2016). Sales performance: Timing of
measurement and type of measurement make a difference. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales
Management, 20(1), 23-36.
Morris, M. H., Davis, D. L., Allen, J. W., Avila, R. A., & Chapman, J. (2016). Assessing the
relationships among performance measures, managerial practices, and satisfaction when
evaluating the salesforce: a replication and extension. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales
Management, 11(3), 25-35.
Piercy, N. F., Cravens, D. W., & Morgan, N. A. (2017). Relationships between sales
management control, territory design, salesforce performance and sales organization
effectiveness. British Journal of Management, 10(2), 95-111.
Babakus, E., Cravens, D. W., Grant, K., Ingram, T. N., & LaForge, R. W. (2016). Investigating
the relationships among sales, management control, sales territory design, salesperson
performance, and sales organization effectiveness. International Journal of Research in
Marketing, 13(4), 345-363.