Develop an effective sales team

As well as setting your salespeople targets for the number of sales you want them to make, you should set them activity targets. These are all the individual aspects of their day-to-day duties that your sales team will carry out as part of their jobs. These activities should ultimately lead to sales. The theory is that if enough of these activities are carried out, they will significantly improve the likelihood of sales being made.

Activity targets might be:

• Completed phone calls - ask your sales staff to record the number of calls they make that are completed with potential customers.
• Face-to-face meetings - get staff to record the number of appointments they make with customers where they attempt a sale.
• Leads generated - measure how effective your staff are at extracting new leads and generating potential new contacts.
• Leads followed up - see how successful and fast your sales staff are at following up on sales enquiries generated by your marketing activity.
• Qualified prospects - ask the sales staff to let you have the qualified prospects that they have identified. These are people who have been picked out as needing the products or services that you offer and who are able to purchase, but who haven't approached you - or been approached.

This is an important area of the sales process, as continual efforts by your staff to generate new business leads may help keep sales figures steady or on the increase. So you may wish to monitor this area of their work just as closely as the actual sales figures.