---
title: "How to Improve Employee Diligence through Sales Process Management?"
description: "This article discusses how distributors can improve sales team diligence by implementing scientific process management. It emphasizes breaking down sales targets into multi-dimensional, quantifiable tasks, standardizing execution, tracking daily progress, and providing timely rewards and penalties to build a solid market foundation."
author: "赵波"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-07-13"
language: "en"
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---

# How to Improve Employee Diligence through Sales Process Management?

> This article discusses how distributors can improve sales team diligence by implementing scientific process management. It emphasizes breaking down sales targets into multi-dimensional, quantifiable tasks, standardizing execution, tracking daily progress, and providing timely rewards and penalties to build a solid market foundation.

Let's start with an example: When the company issues sales tasks, how do distributors break them down? Most distributors I've encountered add 20%-40% to the task volume, then allocate it to salespeople's vehicles, and then set sales tasks by product category. Better clients will break down key product and new product targets, and at the end of the month, they calculate salespeople's performance pay based on sales achievement. Then the problems arise:
How were these products sold?
Where were they sold?
Who were they sold to?
What is your SKU distribution rate?
What causes large-scale returns at terminals?
Is the failure to meet targets due to inability to distribute or slow terminal sales?
How many new outlets/special channels did the salesperson develop this month?
What is the output of your core T20 stores?
...Can you, as a distributor, answer all these questions?
It can be said that more than 80% of distributors in China cannot answer the above questions. Because distributors never care about these things. The result of not managing the process is:
The market is basically in a laissez-faire state. Salesperson management is inadequate, effective working hours are low, terminal visits are poor, customer relationship maintenance is not in place, only large and familiar accounts are visited, new market development relies on personal awareness, sales growth depends entirely on promotions, resulting in pushing bestsellers, new products not selling, and a pile of expired products...
I believe the above problems trouble many distributor friends. The reason for these problems is that most are oriented towards sales targets, using simple financial indicators to support the performance evaluation system, not paying attention to other content. They set goals at the beginning of the month and only look at sales achievement at the end of the month, overemphasizing the importance of promotions. Although they know they need to do market work, their management style is very rough, lacking management tools and means, no skills, short-sighted, and lacking market control. Even if some enlightened distributors consciously manage the diligence of the sales team, the process lacks planning, decisions are random, orders are issued arbitrarily, or they execute according to company-issued targets, and control changes frequently. There is a lack of authority.
To solve these problems, it is necessary to scientifically and completely formulate and implement the performance evaluation system for the entire sales team. The lack of process management mentioned above is because relying on limited financial indicators to support the sales team's sales advancement, lacking an effective performance evaluation system to drive, such distributors cannot grow big. No matter how much you sell, at best you are just a wholesale household.
Today, let's briefly discuss the above issues.
**How to improve employee diligence through sales process management?**
1. In strong markets, focus on results; in weak markets, focus more on frontline employee diligence.
In markets where we are strong, distributors can use brand and market dominance to conduct result-oriented assessment and incentives. But in weak markets, more attention should be paid to the importance of market foundation work.
**The true source of an excellent distributor's channel competitiveness is not how many vehicles, people, or what good products you represent, but the quality of your entire market foundation work. Market foundation work seems simple: all around the consumer's "purchase" to do continuous and regular actions:**
1. Sales personnel conduct regular, continuous, and systematic visits to terminals.
2. Planned development of channels and terminal stores.
3. Standardized visual merchandising at terminals.
4. Comprehensive expansion of categories and items.
Market foundation work cannot be done overnight; it is a long-term and arduous project. It requires distributors to be planned, use quantifiable, monitorable, and easy-to-execute management tools and means, persist in doing it, constantly revise and adjust, and find an effective management system and tools that suit their team.
The core of the quality of the above foundation work is whether your process management of the sales team in market sales is scientific and in place, and whether you can pull the diligence index of the entire sales team to a relatively high value.
A market with particularly good foundation work must have a sales team that is capable of fighting, has strong execution, and high diligence.
The diligence management of the sales team must be goal-oriented, with a series of operational indicator management actions around the goal. Simply put, it is divided into the following points:
**1. Sales process management is to break down goals into multi-dimensional work content, and the content must be closely tied to goal achievement.**
The way salespeople achieve sales is not only to set monthly sales assessment goals for them, but also to set multi-dimensional work indicators around the sales assessment goals:
Common basic work content that needs to be focused on to achieve sales indicators:
a/ Number of active outlets (outlets with transactions in a single month or week);
b/ Number of stores distributing new/key products in the month;
c/ Number of new outlets/special channels developed in the month;
d/ Number of stores with development highlights/displays in the month;
e/ Number of advantageous positions/end caps seized in the month;
f/ Achievement of effective store visits in the month;
g/ Achievement of terminal visual merchandising comprehensive score in the month;
h/ ... in the month.
If distributors no longer solely use sales amount as the entire assessment, but start to pay attention to the process of salespeople's market operations, by assessing the above multiple indicators around sales achievement, the market foundation and sales will definitely develop healthily. Of course, distributors do not have to assess all of them; they can assess monthly in stages and with focus based on the product's market progress or weak areas.
**2. The process should be broken down and quantified into small goals, and standards should be established.**
In a marathon, athletes usually have a technique: before the race, each athlete usually walks the track and divides the entire distance into several small segments using buildings as markers. In this way, during the race, athletes will complete the small goals they set one by one, ultimately achieving the goal of running the full distance quickly.
This has a good enlightening significance for our sales management. After the monthly total goal is set, salespeople may sometimes feel the task is too heavy, or there is still a long time until the end of the month, so they tend to slack off. Distributors also have this problem. But if you break down the various classified assessment indicators for the month into weekly and daily, and at the morning meeting every day, you continuously track the salesperson's daily goals, set standardized requirements for the goals, and effectively reward and correct the achievement of yesterday's goals, this can ensure that salespeople know their daily task goals, how much they have achieved, and how much is left. They will know what encouragement and punishment they will get the next day for achieving or not achieving. This will make salespeople nervous every day, and there will be no more problems of being loose at the beginning of the month and tight at the end.
**3. Sales goals should be differentiated by person, but operation standards should be unified, content should be executable and easy to track.**
When setting sales goals, they must be based on the salesperson's area and market development situation. Absolutely do not use a one-size-fits-all approach. Reference dimensions can be the length of employee tenure, the quantity and quality of area outlets, the strength of individual sales skills, last month's sales, same period last year's sales, product items, and other comprehensive factors to evaluate. It requires salespeople to work hard, but also allows them to reach the goal through effort.
The standards for operation execution must not be inconsistent. Regardless of the market and sales volume, operation standards are one of the most basic tasks for every salesperson. Once inconsistency or discounting occurs, it not only makes data tracking difficult but also challenges execution.
When it comes to tracking, two aspects should be mentioned: First, the tracking goals must be quantifiable into specific data, avoiding vague evaluation words like good, medium, poor, or almost. Second, it must be trackable. Currently, sales management tools are very rich. Data such as the salesperson's daily itinerary, terminal performance, working hours, operation time, number of transactions, and number of transaction items can be tracked through some sales management software. This makes it convenient for distributor friends to track quantified indicators during management. Here, I recommend trying the external service 365 software. This software is quite good for managing the diligence of market personnel. More importantly, the basic functions of quantitative assessment are free!
4. Timely rewards and punishments.
Previously, I told everyone the sunflower seed theory in the group.
Do you know why you can't stop once you start eating sunflower seeds? Because eating sunflower seeds is a task, a very simple task. Through your actions, you quickly get a "reward" - the kernel. When you get the kernel, the pituitary gland in your cerebellum secretes a small amount of dopamine to encourage you to do it. Once your behavior is encouraged, you immediately crack another one, get encouraged again, crack another, and so on.
Through this sunflower seed theory, I want to tell distributor friends: set up the salesperson's work with stages, easy completion, monitorability, and timely rewards. Through timely rewards and punishments, tell salespeople what to do and what not to do. Encourage what should be done to increase their motivation, and punish what should not be done or not achieved in time to avoid it next time. Only then will the goals you set earlier be executed more efficiently and effectively.
5. Precautions:
Goals and standards should be communicated clearly, avoiding vague words and content to reduce ambiguity. Evaluation content should avoid human factors as much as possible, especially goals and standards, to avoid non-quantifiable content. For example: At the morning meeting, require employees to post posters at 10 stores that day, with a reward of 5 yuan for achievement and a fine of 10 yuan for failure. This can easily cause ambiguity: although there is a goal for poster posting, there is a lack of standards for posting. Specifically, it should be: At least 10 stores must post posters that day, with no less than 2 posters per store. Requirements: Must be posted at the store entrance, 1.5 meters above the ground, horizontally, not vertically, and in a place where rain cannot reach. Those who do not meet the above conditions are considered non-compliant. In addition, photos of posters must not be close-ups; they must be taken from 3 meters away or show the full store.
Employee achievement must be rewarded in a timely manner: The best way to reward is to reward on the same day. Currently, the red envelope function in WeChat groups is so powerful. Once a salesperson has an excellent performance, as a manager, you must promptly reward them with a red envelope. Of course, you can also reward them at the next morning meeting in front of all members. Avoid delaying until the next day or the end of the month. This will greatly reduce the effect.
The above has discussed the 4 key points of process management. To do market foundation work well, the diligence management of frontline employees is indispensable. To do diligence management well, you must do assessments every day, track daily, persist, do simple things repeatedly, and do repeated things seriously. Only in this way can the distributor's market foundation be solidified.
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