Sales Department Audit

Submitted by Mitch Seigel on Tue, 3/15/2011

It is so easy for a company to rely on history when maintaining a sales/business development staff, rather than going through the steps of conducting an audit to determine its current and future viability. Who is contributing and who isn’t? What is the cost of sales? Can it be reduced by adding more staff members or possibly by staff reduction? These are all important questions that should be answered regularly.

Sales capacity per company is determined by several factors including, but not limited to, product availability, market competition, pricing of product and length of sales cycle. Once the capacity for company sales is determined, then a performance analysis is developed against your company sales and/or business development history.

Recruiting and Hiring of Sales Staff

Are you setting the correct criteria for hiring or maintaining salespeople for your staff? It isn’t always about whether they have experience in your industry. What about their personal capacity for handling accounts? This needs to be in line with company capacity for sales, to give the best chance for reaching objectives. Possibly what someone is selling at one company has the same capacity needs as your company. At the same time, potentially some sales people on your staff are not capable of providing enough capacity to allow you to reach your goals. This is a definite sign of a need for change!

Can a Salesperson Change Through Sales Training?

Before you decide to make changes on staff, adjustments can be made in time management, sales techniques and follow up, to position the staff members in question, to allow them to fit the company’s needs. Yes, people change when trained. Each instance will vary, depending on the amount of adjustment necessary.

Recognition of the opportunity for company sales capacity is the key to reaching your objectives. Next is having the right staff on board to enable you to reach this projected capacity. And lastly, working through sales training, with the skill set your staff members have or need, underscores a true sales department audit.

What are your challenges when it comes to auditing your sales department? I look forward to hearing your comments.

Until next time …