Whenever a company's sales performance growth is weak or it encounters difficulties, sales managers always think that the salespeople are not doing their best. They always want to know the whereabouts of each salesperson at every moment, believing that something must be wrong somewhere in the sales system. So they strengthen control and formulate more complete rules and regulations to standardize salespeople's behavior. What follows is the salespeople's job-hopping. Failing to retain excellent salespeople has almost become a common problem for many companies. Companies without creative salespeople are happy to have eliminated the "black sheep," but then performance still doesn't improve, and recruitment ads frequently appear in newspapers and magazines.

  1. How to Understand Salespeople Sales action management requires systems, but systems are only preventive measures, just as a country needs laws, but laws cannot solve all social problems. Systems can prevent mistakes but cannot bring innovation and development. Here we do not in any way belittle the importance of rules and regulations; on the contrary, we examine how to improve the level of salesperson action management on the basis of a relatively strict and effective system. How to establish a relatively complete action management system is only the starting point of sales management. The core of action management should be how to create an environment for salespeople to unleash their abilities and motivate them to work hard. While many sales managers' bookshelves are piled with various system forms, they still follow the thinking of Taylor, the father of scientific management, whom American unions regarded as an enemy. Based on a misunderstanding of human nature, the more seriously you implement such norms, the further you are from salespeople. They know how to analyze customer needs but forget the needs of their own salespeople, who are the "customers" of greatest value to the company. The premise of satisfying customers is how to satisfy salespeople's needs, that is, how to create a work environment that maximizes their potential. Many sales managers make a simple logical error. They forget that systems and structures are only tools to achieve goals; such tools sometimes lead to success and sometimes become obstacles to development. Apart from finding problems in the system, they are at a loss. Strict and standardized management systems have become the management goal of sales managers. When sales managers criticize more than praise salespeople, the company must pay more to retain salespeople of the same level. When sales managers know every move of salespeople, the company loses the most useful value of salespeople—creativity. Treating salesperson action management as equivalent to production line configuration is a problem existing in many companies. Moreover, excellent management experts are telling sales managers of various companies how to gain 5-10% of salespeople's talents while losing 90% of their abilities. Most current salesperson action management methods are based on what McGregor called Theory X. This theory holds that normal people are inherently lazy and try to do as little work as possible; they lack ambition, are unwilling to take responsibility, and prefer to be led; people are inherently self-centered and indifferent to organizational needs; people are naturally opposed to reform; people are not very clever, easily deceived, and easily misled by swindlers and careerists. Guided by these assumptions, managers envision various possibilities when completing their tasks. At one extreme, managers are "hard" or "tough." Methods of directing people's behavior include coercion and intimidation (often disguised), close supervision, and tight control of behavior. At the other extreme, managers may be "soft" or "weak." Methods of directing people's behavior include tolerance and satisfying people's needs to maintain peace. Then people will be easy to control and accept leadership. In today's era when people's living standards are gradually improving and people's needs are more multi-layered, this understanding is clearly outdated. Unfortunately, many managers do not recognize this change in the human environment; they have no other way but to belittle subordinates' abilities. Napoleon Bonaparte said, "There are no incompetent soldiers, only incompetent generals." If salesperson action management does not start with the sales manager's basic understanding of salespeople, it is difficult to achieve good results.
  2. The Moderation of Sales Action Management Strict daily reports increase control costs while also increasing salespeople's resentment. If a sales manager's daily task is to check salespeople's daily reports and nitpick, he might be more suited to archival management or working at an accounting firm. Failing to grasp the key and non-key points in salesperson action management and over-relying on rules and regulations is typical of failed sales managers. They are always uneasy about salespeople, always afraid that salespeople are slacking off. When they relax control a little, salespeople also feel it is a rare leisure opportunity, further confirming the sales managers' "foresight." So control only becomes stricter. The other extreme is sales managers who, fearing to dampen salespeople's enthusiasm, let things slide and do not communicate with salespeople for ten days or half a month. Only at the end of the year do they discover that the market has changed dramatically and performance has declined, so they organize a crash sales campaign. Both abandoning action management and over-controlling action management are undesirable attitudes in sales management. So how can we achieve moderate action control, that is, to understand the market and salespeople's work situation in a timely manner without dampening salespeople's enthusiasm? Too many principles and systems sometimes exhaust sales managers. And salespeople who do not act according to the rules are even more troublesome. In this regard, sales managers should grasp the following points: · The biggest characteristic of sales work is dealing with people; understanding and communicating with people will be the key to salesperson action management; · Establish a standardized salesperson action management system, but it is not the stricter and more detailed the better. · Adhere to the principle of management by objectives; · Understand salespeople's action status and market information in a timely manner, not at any time;
  3. Grasp the Direction of Management Change The important function of a sales manager is management. How to grasp the direction of current management change will determine whether a sales manager is successful. Although the concepts of the Internet, WTO, and the new economy fill newspapers, change has also become a common term for entrepreneurs. But what these things mean to a middle-level manager or a salesperson is rarely considered carefully. We believe that the ultimate implementation point of management change lies in the recognition of new management thinking and new management styles by the majority of enterprise managers and employees. Change is not a game for the nobility; the success or failure of change ultimately depends on the recognition of new management methods by ordinary employees. For sales management, the most obvious feature is that simple material incentives and formulaic management systems may no longer be so effective today. When the market requires sales managers to have higher-level thinking, traditional systems may not be able to adapt. Who can create products that customers need but they themselves cannot imagine will determine the key to corporate competitiveness. For sales management, this sentence also applies. Who can create marketing methods that customers cannot even imagine will determine sales efficiency. And none of this can be found by sales managers in the system. Successful sales managers and salespeople are often not so rule-abiding. When a restless salesperson comes up with an immature sales method, the first communication with the sales manager may determine whether he will propose innovative ideas in the future. This is also not stipulated in the system. Therefore, future sales management will shift from reliance on scientific sales systems to truly people-oriented management, rather than just giving heavy rewards to a few outstanding individuals. Creating an action management mechanism that produces excellent salespeople in large numbers will be the primary responsibility of sales managers. And all this cannot be achieved overnight. But waking up from the sleep of reliance on systems is the prerequisite for building a new type of salesperson action management.
  4. Retain Talented Salespeople with Shortcomings Salesperson action management may be an effective way to improve the abilities of salespeople who lack capability. But for capable salespeople who demand freedom, it may become a stumbling block. Moreover, under nanny-like action plans, salespeople may completely lose autonomy, causing work to fall into a simple action cycle and lack innovation. At the same time, some time arrangements (when customers are free) are not entirely decided by sales managers and salespeople; salespeople's work often has no off-duty time. For an excellent sales manager, understanding salespeople is the greatest encouragement to them. Unfortunately, many sales managers, when performance rises, think it is due to their own management skills, but attribute performance decline to salespeople's abilities. For anyone, finding faults is much easier than discovering talents. Managing salespeople with a fault-finding mentality can only further discover salespeople's shortcomings and make salespeople lose confidence. Excellent sales managers never forget to cheer up salespeople, not deflate them. Often excellent salespeople are also the hardest to manage, but why do sales managers always appear before salespeople in a "managing" posture? The essence of salesperson action management should be to create an environment for salespeople to better unleash their abilities, not to control for the sake of control, or to inspect for the sake of inspection. If in a team most salespeople can actively carry out work, and only a few are not enterprising, is it necessary to use the method of detailed daily reports of whereabouts to dampen the enthusiasm of the majority? What benefit does this bring to the improvement of sales performance? For an excellent salesperson, the most intolerable thing is probably the sales manager's distrust of his ability and work initiative. A sales manager who is never assured of salespeople's abilities will never cultivate excellent salespeople. Similarly, he will not retain talented salespeople. How to maintain a balance between attracting excellent salespeople and standardizing salesperson action management is a problem that sales managers must pay attention to when considering salesperson action management. Reply with the following keywords to classify and query relevant professional articles: Sales Supervisor, Second-tier Management, Regional Manager, Distributor Management, New Channels, City Manager, Competition, 2015, Manufacturer-Dealer Game, Product Slow-moving, Terminal Visit Management, Route Management, Deep Distribution, Internal Management, Sales Skills, Profit Improvement, Recruitment, Distribution, Daily Management, Team Motivation, Channel Promotion, Sales Misunderstandings, New Product Launch, Township Market, New Product Pricing, Sales Target Achievement, Closing Orders, Market Visit Inspection, Baijiu, Beer, Sales Volume Increase, Agency Products, Cross-region Sales, KA, Terminal Merchandising, New Market, Market Operation, Learning, Book Recommendations, Inventory Management, New Salespeople, Consumer Promotion, Execution, Old Products, Expired Product Handling, Model Market, Investment Promotion, New Media, Distributor Development, Performance Appraisal, Assessment, Annual Planning, Shopping Guide, Morning Meeting, Display, Transformation, Stock Pressure, Holidays, Distributor Cost Control Channel Operation, Marketing Theory and Laws, Brand Truth, Order Meeting, Team Management, Training, Work Report, Work Report.