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  • Casual Articles - Sales Commission - What Return Should You Expect On Your Sales Compensation Investment?

    7 Keys To Make Your Mark In Marketing
    A career in marketing is one of the most personally and financially satisfying. The marketing profession has seen enormous growth in both size, status and remuneration in recent years.But what can you do to make your mark if you have just secured a new job in marketing? If you are either an aspiring or experienced marketer, making a difference in a new job in a competitive, crowded or noisy marketplace can be difficult.So what should you do in the first 90-days in the new job when those who hired you will be judging your personal performance?Here are 7 Tips For Success in Maximising Your Marketing Effort:1. Clarify your missiong> salesperson manage the relationship, or is there something special about the relationship that exists between the current salesperson and the account? I have seen cases where management held the opinion that ANYONE could manage and maintain the volumes of business that were being produced by major accounts. They questioned why they should continue paying high compensation to the salespeople who were managing those accounts.

    Take Your Customer Service Dept From 'Cost Saving & Cost Reduction' To High Profit & Business Growth
    The more communication I have with people involved in telephone service and sales, such as Contact/Call Centers and Customer Service Departments, the more amazed I become at the reluctance to create more sales and profit opportunities through better interaction with current customers, reactivation of lost accounts and new business acquisition.Companies are forever seeking ways to cut costs and reduce staff - particularly so in Call/Contact Centers (turning so many into 'Call 'n' Wait' disaster zones) - they often fail to see what rewards they can achieve by using the following formula:1 humble telephone + 1 skilled operator + 1 established sales syste
    This article answers the following questions:
    • How do most companies look at return on investment (ROI) for their sales compensation expense?

    • What portion of sales compensation expense do companies allocate to managing existing accounts versus pursuing new accounts?


    • Do most companies expect their salespeople to generate new, additional gross profit each year that is equal to or greater than their compensation?
    One conclusion I have reached after working with many different kinds of companies is that there is little commonality in how they establish the desired return on investment (ROI) from their sales compensation investments. Every company's circumstances are different; as a result, what might constitute an acceptable ROI for one company will not be considered acceptable by another company.

    Here are some questions to consider as you determine the desired sales compensation ROI for your company, and how that ROI should be split between existing accounts and new accounts:

    • What is the value of each sales dollar produced? Is the value different if a sales dollar is produced by an existing account versus a new account?

    • How does the time and effort required to maintain (and grow) existing customers compare to the time and effort required to bring on new accounts?

    • Do accounts operate pretty much on "autopilot" once they have been brought on board, or must your salespeople continue to invest significant effort (in terms of internal prospecting, opportunity qualification, proposal generation, relationship management, etc.) to maintain sales volume and profitability?

    • Once an account has been brought on board, can ANY salesperson manage the relationship, or is there something special about the relationship that exists between the current salesperson and the account?
    I have seen cases where management held the opinion that ANYONE could manage and maintain the volumes of business that were being produced by major accounts. They questioned why they should continue paying high compensation to the salespeople who were managing those accounts.

    Getting Business Owners to Keep Your Business Card
    New business owners often like to get their business cards in the hands of other business owners. It’s not an unknown fact that established business owners often have lots of resources and connections that could really benefit your business. But, if you’re a small business owner just starting out, how can you get these business owners to take you seriously and keep your business card?1. Stop handing out your business cards to business owners like it’s candy.Business cards are such wonderfully creative little marketing products. Most of them, unfortunately, end up in the nearest trash can. The manner in which you hand out your little marketing prod
    equal to or greater than their compensation? One conclusion I have reached after working with many different kinds of companies is that there is little commonality in how they establish the desired return on investment (ROI) from their sales compensation investments. Every company's circumstances are different; as a result, what might constitute an acceptable ROI for one company will not be considered acceptable by another company.

    Here are some questions to consider as you determine the desired sales compensation ROI for your company, and how that ROI should be split between existing accounts and new accounts:

    • What is the value of each sales dollar produced? Is the value different if a sales dollar is produced by an existing account versus a new account?

    • How does the time and effort required to maintain (and grow) existing customers compare to the time and effort required to bring on new accounts?

    • Do accounts operate pretty much on "autopilot" once they have been brought on board, or must your salespeople continue to invest significant effort (in terms of internal prospecting, opportunity qualification, proposal generation, relationship management, etc.) to maintain sales volume and profitability?

    • Once an account has been brought on board, can ANY salesperson manage the relationship, or is there something special about the relationship that exists between the current salesperson and the account?
    I have seen cases where management held the opinion that ANYONE could manage and maintain the volumes of business that were being produced by major accounts. They questioned why they should continue paying high compensation to the salespeople who were managing those accounts.

    7 Tips For Discovering What You Want From Your New Career
    Here are some tips to help you in the career discovery process. You can do them in any order that you'd like, and feel free to skip any that you're not comfortable with. Achieving your dream career is a journey of self-discovery, and finding out who you really are and what you really want out of life can be a fulfilling exercise in itself.Tip #1 - Discover (or re-discover) what you're really passionate about. If your new career isn't something you could feel passionate about, then it's probably not the right choice for you. Think about what you enjoy doing in your spare time: your hobbies, what you like to watch on TV, what you like to read and st
    e are some questions to consider as you determine the desired sales compensation ROI for your company, and how that ROI should be split between existing accounts and new accounts:
    • What is the value of each sales dollar produced? Is the value different if a sales dollar is produced by an existing account versus a new account?

    • How does the time and effort required to maintain (and grow) existing customers compare to the time and effort required to bring on new accounts?

    • Do accounts operate pretty much on "autopilot" once they have been brought on board, or must your salespeople continue to invest significant effort (in terms of internal prospecting, opportunity qualification, proposal generation, relationship management, etc.) to maintain sales volume and profitability?

    • Once an account has been brought on board, can ANY salesperson manage the relationship, or is there something special about the relationship that exists between the current salesperson and the account?
    I have seen cases where management held the opinion that ANYONE could manage and maintain the volumes of business that were being produced by major accounts. They questioned why they should continue paying high compensation to the salespeople who were managing those accounts.

    IT Sales: Move Them From Free to Fee
    When you are in the process of your initial IT sales consultation, it is likely that you will be asked to take a look at something while you are there, For example, they may say, "We've been having a problem with this router. Could you just take a look at it please?"Don't Risk Doing More HarmWhat should you do? If it only takes a few minutes, what's the harm, right? Well, if you get started and you can’t fix it five minutes, you'll get yourself in hot water. They’re not even a paying client here and you are taking the risk of not being able to fix it quickly or doing further damage--neither of which will help you with IT sales.Back Away from thme and effort required to bring on new accounts?

  • Do accounts operate pretty much on "autopilot" once they have been brought on board, or must your salespeople continue to invest significant effort (in terms of internal prospecting, opportunity qualification, proposal generation, relationship management, etc.) to maintain sales volume and profitability?

  • Once an account has been brought on board, can ANY salesperson manage the relationship, or is there something special about the relationship that exists between the current salesperson and the account?
  • I have seen cases where management held the opinion that ANYONE could manage and maintain the volumes of business that were being produced by major accounts. They questioned why they should continue paying high compensation to the salespeople who were managing those accounts.

    The Success of Pixel Marketing Proves that Small is Beautiful
    Advertising space on the web has typically been sold by the banner and by the click. Now, thanks to a hot new concept called pixel marketing, it’s being sold by the pixel. That’s right. Just when you thought there was nothing left to sell, the web has profitably parceled into blocks of pixels that advertisers are snapping up to promote their brands.Here’s how pixel marketing works. Pages are made up of pixel grids, typically of one million pixels which generally sell from 50 cents to $1 each. An advertiser who buys blocks of these pixels can design an image which will be displayed on them, and will link visitors to a corresponding website.The idea forg> salesperson manage the relationship, or is there something special about the relationship that exists between the current salesperson and the account? I have seen cases where management held the opinion that ANYONE could manage and maintain the volumes of business that were being produced by major accounts. They questioned why they should continue paying high compensation to the salespeople who were managing those accounts.

    In some cases management chose to reduce commission rates, which caused the salespeople who had been managing the accounts to leave the company. In other cases management simply switched account assignments and assigned less "expensive" (in terms of compensation) salespeople to the major accounts. Far too often the outcome from either approach was a slow decay in revenue that eventually added up to millions of dollars in lost sales.

    Why did this decay in revenue occur?

    Close inspection identified two key reasons:

    1. The replaced salespeople had enjoyed truly special relationships with key players in the accounts. The key players' loyalty was to the salespeople, not the salespeople's employers. When the salespeople left, the key players saw little reason to continue to favor the salespeople's (previous) employers with their business.


    2. The replaced salespeople were extremely responsive and provided extraordinary levels of service. In some cases these salespeople were unusually successful in navigating their employers' informal networks. This enabled them to solve problems and do favors for their customers with a timeliness that other salespeople could not match.
    If you determine that some of your salespeople DO have enough bandwidth to bring on new accounts, here are questions to consider as you set their "new business" goals:
    • What level of market penetration has your company achieved to date?

    • How much additional market penetration can your company reasonably expect to accomplish within a specified time frame?

    • How many potential prospects exist in each sales territory?

    • How do these potential pros

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