Maintaining A Good Relationship With Your Sales Staff

By nature, sales and business development are extremely different from any other position in most companies as organizations can actually quantify the worth of a professional account executive. An example of another industry in which you can quantify the worth of employees is a hedge fund and the fund manager's investment ROI. With that being said, nobody can gauge whether the accounting department's credits and debits and subsequent performance are worth what your company is paying them. Also, try and try again, but you cannot pinpoint the return on investment you are getting from your human resources group. This doesn't mean that they are less important, however, salespeople are unique in the fact that the amount of revenue they bring into the company, or their "worth" to the business is very apparent and can be calculated almost instantaneously.

Since a good sales representative is truly hard to find, an effective management team will immediately compensate the rep. generously upon seeing good sales numbers from their work. There is nothing worse than having a great sales professional only to lose him or her to a competitor due to a lack of perceived corporate appreciation of his or her work. Much of this perceived appreciation is in the form of salary. Therefore, it is essential that a sales manager, an employee in HR or somebody in the accounting team keep close track of how much each account executive within the sales division is currently selling.

To get an even more exact feel of the corporate worth of a salesperson, their sales numbers should be compared with other salesmen or saleswomen. However, when seeking to give a sales representative a raise and figuring out the amount of that raise, the company must take into account more than just the base salary of the sales professional. The other expenses which should be factored into the payment package for a typical business development professional includes health insurance, travel, home office expenses, cellular phone costs, the profit margin for each sale and more. If the profit margin is quite beneficial for each sale the individual is making, a percentage raise relating to commission should be in order.

A company should expect that their top sales people will eventually ask for a raise in their base salary. In most cases, a company should pay it. If they don't, there are many organizations which are more than willing to fork up the money to acquire this person. Remember that you are not the only show in town. As recruitment specialists, it is our job to find these salesmen and saleswomen. We are constantly coming across cases where we find candidates who are willing to look at other hiring entities simply because they feel underappreciated and under compensated at their current company. Companies have to keep in mind that commissions are heavily taxed and the pressure of having to work off of commission only can have negative effects on performance. Keeping your salespeople happy is essential to their success and is essential to your company preventing turnover and losing great sales professionals.

By: ken sundheim

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KAS Placement is owned by Ken Sundheim and is a sales recruitment agencysales staffing sales recruitment agencies and marketing staffing agency nyc marketing staffing agencies new york The firm's sales headhunters sales headhunters are based in NYC.