The Best Sales Performance Management Software

Sales performance management is the practice of tracking and optimizing key performance indicators. By using this data, sales managers can determine which salespeople provide the best performance and which need improvement.

What is Sales Performance Management Software?

Sales performance management (SPM) software helps businesses automatically monitor, understand, and optimize their sales processes. Traditionally, SPM systems allow managers to review sales performance on a per sales representative or team basis, depending on your preferences. With software, this process can be automated to include real-time performance tracking, incentive management, and KPI analysis.

SPM optimization is aimed at improving sales performance in two ways: the reps themselves and the customers they interact with during the sales process. By automating sales performance management practices, your business can beat the bottom line all while inspiring greater customer loyalty.

Features of Sales Performance Management

• Performance tracking: Automatically track and record salesperson performance in real-time
• Key performance indicator (KPI) analysis: Review performance based on set KPI, such as revenue totals, conversion rates, and more
• Quota management: Calculate sales quotas for each sales rep or team; set goals based on specific metrics
• Territory mapping management: Ensure sales reps stay within set territories and avoid overlapping
• Forecasting: Predict upcoming sales based on historical data and other variables
• Sales incentive compensation management (ICM): Provide incentives for sales reps through quota gamification, commissions, and bonuses
• Commission financing: Calculate sales compensation in advance to ensure all salespeople are properly paid commission, bonuses, and payroll
• Performance feedback: Create channels to inform sales reps of their performance records and indicate ways they can improve performance in the future; handling new employee onboarding based on feedback from your current sales team

Best Sales Performance Management Software Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing a sales performance management system at your workplace:

Monitor Sales Process in Real-Time

A major benefit of sales performance management software over traditional SPM systems is the ability to review performance at any point of the sales cycle. Manual SPM practices meant most performance data could only be analyzed after set time periods. Unfortunately, this means tangible sales data isn't often available until it is too late to truly matter. For example, a company might have weekly, quarterly, or annual performance reviews based on aggregate data. As a result, managers might not be aware of salesperson issues until long after the opportunity to intervene has passed.

Thanks to sales performance management software, managers can review the effectiveness of their sales reps in real time. By monitoring performance, managers and reps can increase the likelihood of efficient sales execution. If a problem arises with a sale, diligent managers can offer coaching assistance before quarterly reviews. Some management systems even include specific modules for skill training and educating salespeople so they align their practices with management preferences.

Understand and Analyze Sales Data

Sales performance management software collects information about all your sales reps and teams. As new data comes into the sales performance management system, managers can gain analysis for the KPIs of their choosing. Select custom metrics like:

• Sales execution and success
• Employee performance
• Customer engagement (new and returning)
• Weekly, monthly and quarterly sales
• Budget and revenue

There are many other metrics available, depending on exactly what you want to measure and monitor. This data can then be used to review effectiveness and find opportunities for improvement. And sales managers can begin tracking trends to identify better sales tactics in the future based on historical data. This same data can be used by your accounting department to determine commission caps and bonus payroll.

Optimize the Sales Processes

Once your sales managers have had the opportunity to review KPIs, they can find new ways to encourage sales. Sales performance management software with incentive compensation management (ICM) functionality provides ways to motivate sales reps. Of course, the basics are commissions-based. With SPM, you can determine the best percentage rate for the most enticing sales commission structure. Do you have multiple salespeople working as a team on a single project? You can calculate commissions and bonuses based on a per person rate or overall team performance.

Gamification is one of the ways you can incentivize your sales team. Through sales performance management software, sales managers can create leaderboards showing the performance of each rep or team. Additionally, individual scorecards can privately indicate who has the best and worst performance records. Salespeople can use their own data to determine ways to increase sales effectiveness.

Finally, better sales performance from your reps leads to better customer relationship management (CRM). As part of the review process, collect feedback from the customers directly in order to supplement your data. Create a data-driven approach by analyzing any commonalities which made a sale succeed or fail.

Reduce Sales Rep Turnover

Sales has an incredibly high turnover rate. Of course, the right incentives can keep the best salespeople working hard for your corporation. Yet while ICM software is useful for rewarding your best performers, sales performance management tools can identify those who need to improve while there is still time to make a difference. By reducing strain on those who are struggling, your company can retain salespeople longer.

Sales performance management software allows you to coach reps who need assistance with sales execution. As mentioned before, real-time monitoring tools let managers see how sales are progressing as they happen. Using this data, sales managers can drive more sales.