Sales Force Management

Overview

The second course in the Sales Operations/Management Specialization, Sales Force Management covers various aspects of hiring and personnel administration. Students will learn about job design and recruitment processes, tools of recruitment, the role of training in sales force development, and motivating salespeople to perform the tasks critical to an organization's success.

Syllabus

Sales Force Selection, Recruitment, Motivation, and Evaluation

This week provides a general overview of the job design and recruitment processes. As part of that, we cover three important documents: a job analysis, a job description and a job qualifications statement. We discuss what these documents are, what purpose they serve and how they are prepared. We present a concept called the job recruitment funnel and show how this is applied to hiring situations. Finally we discuss 8 sources for recruiting sales people.

Sales Force Recruitment

This module focuses on the recruitment of sales professionals. In this section, we cover the tools of recruitment. This includes interviewing, testing and references. We also cover how to rank and select job candidates and describe the factors that predict performance and turnover.

The Role of Training in Sales Force Development

In this module we focus on the training. We cover the 8 steps involved in a sales training program, how to set training objectives and the kinds of content found in sales training programs. We discuss the three key decisions involved in sales training as well as the emerging trends in sales training.

Motivating the Sales Force

Part of a sales manager's job is to motivate his or her salespeople to perform the tasks critical to an organization's success. In this unit, we define motivation and its importance in sales. We will present five different theories of motivation and show how these work in sales situations. Finally, we discuss the use of rewards and incentives as part of a motivation program.

Sales Force Evaluation

In this module we cover the basics of sales force evaluation. We will begin with identifying the challenges a manager faces in evaluating a sales person. Next I will present a five step model to guide the evaluation process. After this, we will review the various criteria used in evaluating sales people. Finally, we will go over the four kinds of appraisals.