Creating a Sales Force

Central to any company’s sales efforts is, of course, its sales force. A topflight sales force isn’t just something that happens all on its own—it is composed of individuals, each of which have become properly skilled.

Today an expert sales force cannot exist without the right CRM solution—and an effective, empowering CRM solution is central to keeping a sales force sailing along on an even keel through revenue highs and lows, and through personnel arrivals and departures. That CRM solution is the key to increasing sales force effectiveness, and providing many other needed benefits.

Chapter 1: How to Build the Vital Sales Force Skill Ladder

It used to be that a sales rep making halfway decent numbers had a future. But in today’s highly competitive marketplaces and internet-assisted buying, it takes more than just numbers for a salesperson to truly survive. A topflight sales force must be composed of experts in every area of their craft.

Chapter 2: Selling the CRM Solution to the Sales Force

Obviously CRM benefits should be demonstrated to management – in the end it will be management that will cut the check for CRM purchase. But it will be the sales force that ends up having to use this new CRM application. It will be they who take to it happily or begrudgingly.

Chapter 3: CRM Solutions and Sales Force Turnover

Turnover is especially painful when it comes to the sales force, if only because you’re dealing directly with company revenue. A sales rep departs and you’ve immediately lost regular sales from that territory or area. It’s the CRM solution that can ease the difficulty of that transition…or not.

Chapter 4: Increase Sales Process Effectiveness Without Doling Out More Cash

Putting in a CRM solution that actually follows your sales process and possesses proper metrics allows you to monitor – and improve – that sales process all the way down the line.

Chapter 5: Breaking Down the Wall Between Marketing and the Sales Force

In some companies it’s obvious, in others it’s more subdued. But it’s normally a constant situation: marketing and sales just can’t see eye-to-eye. They snipe at each other, each criticizes the other to management, and in some measure each is deemed responsible for the other’s perceived shortcomings. If a way were found for the sales force and marketing to work in complete cooperation, the war could actually be won by both sides.

Chapter 6: Where Sales Force Technology has Brought Us

For buyers and for the sales force alike, the sales landscape looks completely different than it did even 20 years ago.