A recent conversation brought to mind the responsibility of sales management for the development of both existing and new sales people. Why?
Retention.
As the employment market has shifted to an “employee market” – at least for talented sales professionals – sales management needs to make plans to retain sales people. After all, the talented sales person chose you and your organization, just as you chose them. Don’t kid yourself…this isn’t a one way street. Far from it my friends!
Those tasked with the responsibilities associated with sales management (regardless of the title given them) have a wide variety of tasks that need their attention everyday. The investment in sales people ranks as one of the highest people costs in the organization. If you’re going to invest, then it makes sense to protect your investment. It would also seem logical to provide a compensation component in the sales manger’s plan for retaining sales people. Compensation guides behavior.
In a recent sales manager role, I was dubbed the “Master Manager of the Comp Plan.” I’m not sure it was an entirely positive title (one of the finance guys didn’t like my efforts at all – but that’s a topic for another post). The key here is to provide an incentive to sales management to protect your investment. If your investment is protected, retention will increase. If retention rises, perhaps additional funds can be invested in other areas for sales success!
If you can convince finance of the ROI.