---
title: "Successful Sales Management: Team Management"
description: "Team management involves organizing members into groups based on work nature and abilities to participate in decision-making and problem-solving, enhancing productivity and achieving organizational goals. Key aspects include building a sales team, selecting appropriate salespeople, setting standards and metrics for quick identification, and developing targeted training plans."
author: "蒋军"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2014-11-01"
language: "en"
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# Successful Sales Management: Team Management

> Team management involves organizing members into groups based on work nature and abilities to participate in decision-making and problem-solving, enhancing productivity and achieving organizational goals. Key aspects include building a sales team, selecting appropriate salespeople, setting standards and metrics for quick identification, and developing targeted training plans.

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Team management refers to organizing members into groups based on work nature and abilities within an organization, involving them in decision-making and problem-solving to enhance productivity and achieve organizational goals.

The main content of team management includes: building a sales team, selecting suitable salespeople based on sales targets, establishing a set of standards and metrics to quickly identify sales talent; developing clear, targeted plans to improve sales capabilities, determining incentive and reward schemes for team members, and standardizing sales personnel in both mindset and practical skills to build an excellent sales team for short-, medium-, and long-term goals.

Humans are complex beings; management or marketing management cannot escape the role of people. Some say that if you manage people well, most problems are solved. I think this is true because people are paramount; without people, nothing else matters. Therefore, in sales management, team management is undoubtedly crucial, perhaps even the top priority among the three major components.

**Building the Sales Team**

**Recruiting Sales Personnel**

Recruitment begins with a plan. Define the sales department's staffing needs, ensuring positions are created for roles, not roles for people. Clarify who is responsible for recruitment, how many people to hire, and the timeline.

Responsible parties: The sales department and HR jointly conduct recruitment. Typically, HR handles initial contact and first interviews, assessing qualifications and potential, while the sales department evaluates experience, industry background, and professional skills from a technical perspective.

How many to hire: This depends on the sales organization's size and sales targets. Break down targets by region, then by city, channel, terminal, and individual. Consider current staff turnover and future development within the next year to determine the number.

Timeline: Create a recruitment schedule. Analyze current staff stability to estimate needs. Set a timeline based on typical hiring success rates and retention.

Recruitment criteria: First, conduct a job analysis, examining the competitive and social environment, industry characteristics, and relevant laws. Then, define job requirements, considering the company's perspective on the role.

Job description: Requirements include education, work experience, language and communication skills, proactive attitude, and professionalism. Description covers product sales, sales targets, responsibilities, relationship with the company and department, and special restrictions like travel and overtime.

Recruitment channels: Talent markets, universities, media ads, online recruitment, industry referrals; for senior sales and management, consider headhunters.

Information dissemination: Tailor to the recruitment method. For targeted venues like job fairs or schools, focus on communication and promotion; for non-targeted, use ads like newspapers. Notably, online recruitment is highly efficient, effective, and low-cost.

**Selecting Sales Personnel**

Application review: Filter candidates meeting requirements to improve efficiency.

Interviews: A core step. Gain deeper understanding, clarify details from applications. Interviewers introduce the company, then candidates introduce themselves and answer questions, assessing thinking, expression, and problem-solving.

Typically, HR conducts the first interview; if passed, the sales department's middle management interviews; for entry-level positions, if passed, the marketing VP interviews.

Testing: For higher-level roles, tests may include professional knowledge, psychological quality, and situational simulation. These assess expertise, intelligence, personality, and interests, which significantly impact sales success.

Selecting salespeople is critical for their career prospects. Excellent salespeople are not trained but selected. Why? Because success depends not only on knowledge and intelligence but more on personality and talent. Training makes them competent, not excellent. Different markets require different types, so selection must consider development and fit.

Background checks: Verify qualifications and experience against applications and interviews. Methods include calling previous employers, checking with supervisors and colleagues, and reviewing client feedback.

**Training Sales Personnel**

Training helps new employees quickly learn company processes, systems, and market operations. The process includes objectives, content, exams, and evaluation. Avoid making it a formality; always test and evaluate.

**Key areas:**

- Company knowledge: Introduction, culture, history, structure, strategy, competitive position, marketing strategy, key markets.
- Product/brand knowledge: Brand introduction, product categories, lines, mix, pricing, packaging, manufacturing, benefits, key competitors, consumer groups, channel status.
- Market knowledge: Environment, channels, competitors, consumers, and other relevant information.
- Sales skills: Information gathering, consumer identification, approaching customers, presentations, closing techniques.
- Market management: Distributor development, terminal development and maintenance, distributor management, salesperson management, information management.
- Administrative management: Report filling, customer inquiries, expense control, self-management, time management.

**Developing Sales Personnel**

Development focuses on training and career planning. Training is job-specific, using job descriptions to identify needs, set objectives, design content, and evaluate. Career planning maps out promotion paths so salespeople see a future and know how to get there.

**Combining Sales Talent**

Hiring is one thing, but building a cohesive team for each market requires reconfiguration. Different markets need different people. Mature markets need detail-oriented managers for maintenance; developing markets need pioneers with resilience and speed; penetration markets need bold individuals for quick starts and breakthroughs.

Managers must use people according to their strengths. In short, the best fit is the best choice.

**Setting Clear Standards and Metrics**

Evaluation standards are vital; without them, nothing is achieved. Sales team management typically sets standards in these areas:

A. Volume metrics
B. Planning capability metrics
C. Process management metrics
D. Administrative work metrics
E. Effort and attitude metrics

Generally, sales representatives' volume metrics weigh about 60%, while department managers may be around 20%. Specific weights vary by company and market development, but frontline execution leans toward results.

Metrics should align with company development, setting an appropriately forward-looking system. Mid-sized companies can use KPIs; large ones may use BSC. For weights, if a regional market is mature, growth metrics can be lower; for developing markets, set higher; for new markets, be reasonable to avoid harming market health and team morale.

**Improving Sales Skills**

Sales skills, though tactical, directly impact performance, especially for direct sales without intermediaries.

Key is knowing your product and converting features into customer benefits. Understand competitors' strengths and weaknesses to communicate effectively and highlight your advantages.

First, enhance product knowledge and understand the market and competitors.
Second, display professionalism and empathy.
Third, deeply understand customer needs and deliver value.
Fourth, be confident in yourself and your work.
Fifth, develop communication and rapport.

**Strengthening Sales Incentives**

Why do teams become disheartened? Incentive issues. Maslow's hierarchy shows needs from physiological to self-actualization. If basic survival isn't met, talking about life values won't motivate.

Two classic theories: Maslow's hierarchy and Herzberg's two-factor theory. Maslow's explains ascending needs; only after lower needs are met do higher ones emerge. Herzberg's theory, like Maslow's and McClelland's, focuses on factors affecting performance.

First, some factors lead to satisfaction, others prevent dissatisfaction. Second, satisfaction and dissatisfaction aren't on a single continuum. Two-factor theory distinguishes motivators (work itself, recognition, achievement, responsibility) and hygiene factors (company policy, supervision, salary, conditions, relationships). Motivators are intrinsic; hygiene factors are extrinsic.

Without incentives, teams lack drive. How to motivate salespeople?

Commonly, base salary plus commission. For mature markets, higher base and lower commission rates are suitable because sales volumes are large but growth is low, balancing efficiency and fairness. For developing markets, set higher growth rates and commissions to encourage expansion. For new markets, don't overemphasize volume; focus on process and reasonable layout, providing a buffer. This ensures market development, health, and team capability.

**Strengthening Daily Management**

Daily management can be summarized as the "Eight Steps of Terminal Visits," also known as institutionalized or refined marketing.

Many FMCG companies use this region-centric model, supporting team management. It addresses efficiency in daily work, achieving goals through each person's daily tasks, timing, actions, standards, problems, and solutions.

The eight steps cover the entire visit process from preparation to departure.

They include preparation, store observation, greeting, display and stocking, inventory check, sales visit, ordering, and thanking and leaving.

Standardization ensures efficiency and consistency, fostering stable terminal relationships. It doesn't mean saying the same thing every time but completing the process without missing key elements. However, systems shouldn't replace human touch; managers must handle ideological work and logistics. As the saying goes, "Why did the Kuomintang fail? Because they had no political commissars." Unified thinking ensures efficient action. Sales managers should care for staff's daily lives and learning, combining professionalism and system to unleash strong team power.

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