Focus

• Give your team comprehensive information and focus them on the most important customers and prospects. Create guides to market opportunities as well as detailed profiles of individual customers. Customer profiles should include contact information, details about individual decision-makers, purchasing history, competitive activity and account profitability. Prioritize the accounts that have strong growth potential or are a serious competitive threat.
  
  

Control

• Monitor team and individual performance across a range of factors, such as account retention, account growth, new business wins and account profitability. According to the software firm Business Objects, tracking sales force performance by key metrics is a vital first step to improving effectiveness and productivity. Review sales costs and compare the results of different sales support programs. Use the information to improve productivity by identifying training needs, improving territory planning and focusing sales support on priority areas.
  
  

Territory

• Analyze the way your sales force is structured. A geographical structure with individual sales staff responsible for customers in different territories may be efficient in terms of traveling time, but changing business needs may indicate that vertical market expertise is more important. Changing the structure to align with market needs can improve productivity and performance.
  
  

Updates

• Switching sales force information to the Internet is efficient and provides time and cost savings. Using the Internet as a sales tool allows you to display up-to-date stock and pricing information on-site, giving sales staff immediate access to the latest information about their shipments and back orders. Using smartphones, sales staff can upload their own status reports and order details to ensure that sales management details are always up-to-date.
  
  

Telemarketing

• Telemarketing can enhance sales force performance and productivity by taking over some time-consuming, routine tasks, such as arranging appointments, making calls to qualify prospects and maintaining regular contact with prospects as a sale progresses. By transferring responsibilities, the sales force can spend more time with customers and concentrate on qualified prospects.
  
  

Incentives

• Sales incentives focus sales teams on the rewards for closing deals. The consultancy Accenture recommends making the incentive program transparent so that sales staff can understand the possible rewards for increased sales activity.