--- title: "Ten Principles for Setting Sales Targets to Make Policies More Effective" description: "A regional manager once expressed frustration with his company's sales policies, which frequently changed and left the sales team confused. To address this, companies should follow ten principles when formulating sales policies, including being practical and executable, simplifying procedures, ensuring clear wording, reserving flexibility, maintaining stability, adapting to changes, protecting team interests, encouraging innovation, being meticulous, and upholding core principles." author: "New Distribution" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2017-11-02" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/ten-principles-for-setting-sales-targets-to-make-policies-more-effective-3f4aac94/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/ten-principles-for-setting-sales-targets-to-make-policies-more-effective-3f4aac94.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/FBjIFBg6fmNPCvbMHok3hg" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E9%94%80%E5%94%AE%E7%9B%AE%E6%A0%87%E5%88%B6%E5%AE%9A%E5%8D%81%E5%A4%A7%E5%8E%9F%E5%88%99-%E8%AE%A9%E6%94%BF%E7%AD%96%E6%9B%B4%E6%9C%89%E6%95%88-3f4aac94.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/ten-principles-for-setting-sales-targets-to-make-policies-more-effective-3f4aac94/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Ten Principles for Setting Sales Targets to Make Policies More Effective > A regional manager once expressed frustration with his company's sales policies, which frequently changed and left the sales team confused. To address this, companies should follow ten principles when formulating sales policies, including being practical and executable, simplifying procedures, ensuring clear wording, reserving flexibility, maintaining stability, adapting to changes, protecting team interests, encouraging innovation, being meticulous, and upholding core principles. I once met a regional manager from a company who, during our conversation, expressed great helplessness. When asked why, he said he was dissatisfied with the company's sales policies, which frequently changed, leaving the sales team at a loss in the midst of constant adjustments. So, for companies, how can they effectively formulate sales policies that adapt to and meet market demands? 1. **Principle of Being Practical and Executable** Sales policies must be based on the actual market conditions, formulated through a comprehensive analysis of the company's resource status and the competitive landscape. When developing sales policies, we must thoroughly study the actual market situation, using tools like SWOT analysis. Policies should not be made on a whim; once formulated, they must face the market and ensure full executability. A policy without executability is a piece of waste paper, worthless. 2. **Principle of Simplifying Procedures and Easy Operation** The execution procedures of sales policies should be as simple as possible. Whether it's internal policy verification procedures or policies for distributors and customers, such as rebates, the first consideration at the execution level must be whether the operation can be simplified and whether there are complex, cumbersome procedures. Internally, our sales personnel should focus entirely on market operations, not on figuring out how to navigate policy procedures. Externally, customers should obtain both spiritual and material benefits from sales policies more easily, without numerous signatures or evidence requirements. The core of our sales policy formulation is to fully motivate sales personnel and distributors or customers to sell our products, not to make them feel our procedures are troublesome, which would undermine the effectiveness of policy execution. 3. **Principle of Precise Wording and Clear Understanding** Sales policies ultimately need to be expressed in writing. The characteristic of Chinese language is that if the wording is not precise, it can lead to multiple interpretations, resulting in situations where "each party has its own argument," and the policy makers become "officials who cannot settle family disputes." A policy might be good, and the makers might not have intended such ambiguities, but if the wording is not precise, it can backfire. Therefore, the written content of sales policies must be precise, with careful consideration of words, sentences, and tone, to produce a text that fully embodies the policy and is easily understood by sales personnel and customers, without any ambiguity. Only such a policy can serve as the fundamental expression of sales policy. 4. **Principle of Reserving Space and Differentiating Markets** The Chinese market is complex and vast. Sales policies must fully consider regional characteristics, reserving a certain operational space to differentiate market regions, so that our market can adapt to all markets. If no space is reserved, some markets will be fundamentally unable to implement the policy. If forced to execute, the result may be wasted market opportunities, and the loss may be ours. Therefore, policy space must be effectively reserved. 5. **Principle of Ensuring Long-term Stability** Any sales policy must consider long-term principles; the fundamental principles and core of a policy should at least be able to last for one year. For customers, if policies are unstable, the realization of profit space is not guaranteed. Without the fundamental guarantee of profit space, no customer will easily decide to cooperate with us long-term. Without long-term cooperation intentions and confidence, they will not have any long-term plans or actions in market operations. For our internal sales personnel, if they cannot see the possibility of achieving goals or the embodiment of value, in today's society with increasing survival pressure, who can guarantee loyalty to the company? 6. **Principle of Timely Adjustment and Adapting to Changes** The market is changing, competitors are changing, customers' interest needs are changing, and the relative interests of our team members are also changing. Therefore, sales policies must be able to be adjusted in a timely manner to adapt to market changes. Both philosophy and physics teach that in the world, change is absolute and constancy is relative, which illustrates this point. As policy makers, we must consider the ability to adjust policies in a timely manner. It is impossible to say that once a policy is formulated and released, we can respond to all changes with constancy; this is impossible and nonexistent in market competition. 7. **Principle of Ensuring Interests and Team Motivation** Interest is an unavoidable topic, especially for frontline sales personnel. For grassroots staff, survival before development is the basic principle; without survival, there is no better development. For companies, they absolutely cannot demand that sales personnel treat the company like their own business or regard it as their child. Therefore, in formulating sales policies, the interests of team members must be effectively guaranteed. Interests include two aspects: the realization of basic material interests and the realization of relatively long-term interests that can be expected. All interest settings must not make sales personnel feel like they are building castles in the air. While pressure must be given, the basic interests of sales personnel must be met. They should be like jumping to pick peaches: with physical effort, they can pick the peach after a few jumps, not after many jumps without success. If they cannot achieve it, they will quickly lose confidence. The interest-driven motivation and incentives are the most fundamental guarantee for the sales team. With a stable team, the fundamental realization of sales policies is possible. 8. **Principle of Flexible Application and Encouraging Innovation** After a policy is formulated, execution comes into play. As a policy, and as policy makers and managers, we must consider flexible application at all execution levels. Within a certain range, allow market personnel to make "mistakes" and to "play on the edge." We should maintain relative flexibility regarding these edge cases, not strictly enforce the policy to the letter. Policy makers should understand that while allowing sales personnel to play on the edge and make mistakes, to some extent, they are innovating, actively studying the sales policy and the regional market conditions. Without active research, such edge cases and mistakes would not occur. Remember, innovation is the foundation for us to stand in the market; without innovation, there is no driving force for sustainable development. 9. **Principle of Meticulousness and Avoiding Future Problems** The market is dynamic and ruthless. Sales policies must be formulated with meticulous and thorough consideration, absolutely avoiding principled errors or omissions, as such issues could lead to destructive and irreparable mistakes. Therefore, we must consider meticulously, repeatedly, conduct in-depth market research and analysis, and formulate sales policies that leave no future problems. 10. **Principle of Persisting in Execution and Keeping Core Principles Unchanged** As long as our sales policies are based on reality, the market, innovation, and actual results, then in actual execution, we must adhere to the fundamental and core sales policies. Isn't there an advertising slogan that says, "Without persistence, there is no future"? In the current Chinese market, to some extent, execution is far more important than strategy and innovation. 99% execution + 1% innovation is far greater than 99% innovation + 1% execution. Remember, execution is always fundamental. **2017 (3rd) FMCG + Internet Conference** will be held in Chongqing in November 2017. The conference will closely focus on the theme "New Forces, New Ecology," inviting **1000+ distributors, 500+ brand owners, 200+ B2B platform founders, and 100+ investment and financing institutions** to jointly explore the new chapter of cross-border integration! Click the link below to review the highlights of the first and second FMCG + Internet Conferences: [2016 "FMCG + Internet" Summit Forum]() -END- --- ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671