Being an inside sales manager, you have a lot of responsibilities that include managing performance. To gain success, you need to ensure that your sales reps are adequately trained to accomplish their targets and precisely report the information. By the end of the day, you may find that your hands are always full!

This is where a robust sales performance management (SPM) automation software supports you and your team to work effectively. In this article, we’ll discuss some pointers for managing performance as an inside sales manager to make the process easier for you!

Sales Performance Management (SPM) and its Components

Sales Performance Management (SPM) is a set of operational and analytical functions that ensures each person on your sales team works effectively towards organizational goals and objectives. It includes planning, communicating goals, working on them, and monitoring performance.

A sales performance management strategy deals with three essential components: where, how, and what, to succeed in the market. Now, Let’s see the components in detail.

Sale planning (where to sell)

Sales planning is a method that involves capacity planning, account segmentation, territory allocation, setting targets, and organizing all activities to achieve your goals. It mainly helps stay ahead of the curves in either market or workforce by optimizing every segment of the sales process.

Sale incentives (how to sell)

Incentives are one at the core of the sales management process. Using incentive programs, companies reported a 79% success rate in meeting their goals (source). Using this component, sales managers push sales reps to focus their efforts on different regions to increase revenue.

Sale insights (what to sell)

Sale insights are more suitable for sales managers to measure and improve their business. In the past few years, using advanced software, sales managers have collected and processed data from every part of the organization and delivered reports precisely. It also helps them to forecast what to sell depending on the demand of the customer’s needs.

Managing Performance as an Inside Sales Manager

Managing performance is a challenging task. However, using the below strategies, you can make it easier and ensure maximum production from your team.

1. Set up an effective in-house training program

It’s a fact that even when a well-experienced sales rep is hired, they may feel stuck picking up things without guidance. So, it is imperative to have practical in-house training for your team to grow and acquire skills. 

You need to look at three key points to simplify this process:

• First, make sure you collect relevant blogs, reports, e-books, and other resources and store them in resource libraries to help sales reps find and access them quickly.
• Set an online training program so that they educate themselves in their own time and pace.
• Have a regular check on their performance and turn their mistakes into a valuable learning experience.

2. Define what’s best for your customers and prospects

Getting into the channel of your team, uncover what works best. It is said that about 80% of organizations compete mainly using customer experience (CX) [source]. It means that every success of your sales team depends on your ability to deliver a high level of customer experience. 

Make sure you send surveys to collect information from satisfied customers and use them to teach your team to work better than your competitors can’t match.

3. Using right inside sales solution

Inside sales are nothing without the right technology and tools that make your team work swiftly and successfully. Identifying the pain points and time-consuming tasks for the sales team is essential before selecting the best solution.

Few functions such as auto-dialing, lead distribution, CRM data entry, and reporting have been improved lately, using automation tools saving both money and time.

Related: Must-Have Tools for Inside Sales: Pay Attention!

4. Appreciation and compensation

The best way to increase the performance of the sales reps is appreciation and compensation. Keep your employees happy with rewards and bonuses. Introduce them to non-monetary incentives like free lunch, providing fun bounties for their best achievement.

Rewarding them with these types of incentives motivate and challenge them to achieve higher goals, thus increasing the revenue and reducing employee turnover.

5. Engaging sales reps and replacing

You shouldn’t forget that every inside sales rep can have a challenging, isolated, and nerve-wracking experience. It is not easy to keep talking to a stack of prospects daily and nurture them until they turn into customers. So, always initiate a conversation and engage them to know about the problems they face.

Moreover, replacing a sales rep is difficult. But still, even after rendering all possible help to accomplish if a sales rep fails, he must be laid off from the team. This is also a necessary step to be taken to increase performance and revenue.

Related: Tips & Strategies For Successful Inside Sales 

Managing performance as an inside sales manager is a challenging task. Although it may be difficult to keep track of every detail, it is vital to stay on top priority to increase revenue. Using the above pointers, you can effectively manage your team’s performance and maximize productivity.