Formalizing the Sales Support Function

At the highest level, the Sales Support function is responsible for ensuring that the Sales & Marketing departments have the tools, resources, and systems they need to achieve current and future sales revenue targets. Use Demand Metric’s downloadable Director of Sales Support job description to formalize the role of sales support in your organization.

Director of Sales Support Responsibilities:

• Facilitate Deal Closing – manage multi-region opportunities by building and managing project specific sales teams, and provide support to facilitate opportunity conversion.
• Direct and Manage - regional Sales Operations & Application Managers to efficiently support the sales and marketing departments.
• Develop and Implement – comprehensive strategies, systems, tactics, metrics, budgets, resource requirements, and action plans to grow and support sales revenue targets and future growth targets within a specified geographic region.
• Analyze Business Processes – and collaborate with Senior Account Managers, Sales & Marketing Directors, Technical Support, and Operations to identify opportunities to streamline processes, and measure results of activities.
• Implement and Maintain – enterprise Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and provide support for sales, marketing, & customer service.
• Develop Sales Support Metrics – track and report on performance and productivity of the technical sales support team.
• Build - a collaborative environment by emphasizing teamwork.
• Develop and Communicate – sales support strategy to management team.

Standardizing Performance Reviews

Completing performance reviews on a regular basis is essential for maintaining motivation, assessing department capabilities, and managing your staff effectively. Managers who do not complete performance reviews or deal with performance issues reduce employee morale, decrease credibility of management, diminish organizational effectiveness, and contribute to increased costs for resources. Use Demand Metric’s downloadable Performance Review Template to help you standardize your employee performance review process.

What are the Key Areas to Evaluate & Measure?

• Competency Evaluation – this section provides a series of objective skills, behaviors, and attitudes, and asks respondents to rate the employee’s ability.
• Objectives & Results – compare results for the review period with the pre-defined objectives set at the last performance review.
• Accomplishments – use this area to discuss key accomplishments made in the review period and highlight how these helped the organization hit its goals.
• Strengths & Opportunities – document the top 3 strengths and opportunities for improvement. These areas will be evaluated in subsequent performance reviews to determine if the employee is developing new skills & abilities.
• Suggestions for Organizational Improvement – this section allows the employee to suggest any business processes that could be improved. It is very important that a review is a two-way process; be sure to take these ideas to heart and go to bat for your team with Senior Management.
• Professional Development Plan – development plan should include specific development objectives, related activities to support knowledge & skill growth, and measures & timeframes for completion.

Running Effective & Actionable Meetings

When properly planned and executed, meetings can efficiently communicate ideas, solve problems, and generate action items. Unfortunately, many managers waste time by holding unnecessary or ineffective meetings. Read this summary to learn how to run an effective meeting, and use Demand Metric’s Meeting Agenda Template and Meeting Minutes Template to standardize your meeting process.

Meeting Facilitation Best Practices:

• Plan & Delegate - Set a firm agenda and provide to attendees in advance. Only book as much time as should be required to discuss each agenda item. Delegate responsibilities such as recording minutes or setting up the room.
• Respect & Engage - encourage participation from all attendees to gather multiple perspectives. Don’t allow one or two individuals to control the entire discussion. Be respectful and listen carefully to each participant’s responses.
• Monitor & Measure - start your meeting at the scheduled start time, even if all participants have not arrived. Review meeting minutes on a weekly basis to ensure that action items are being followed up on.

Develop your Team’s Strategic Skill-Set

Leaders of marketing departments are charged with increasing the knowledge and skills of their team, but many do not have a plan for educating and developing their staff. Use this summary to identify which skills you have, and what strategies you can deploy to engage your team and expand their strategic & tactical skills. Don’t miss our Marketing Skills Matrix which outlines simple, developing, and advanced tactical and strategic marketing skills required for marketing executives.

What are Key Team Building Exercises?

• Read & Discuss a Book - consider assigning some proactive reading to get your team on the same page when it comes to marketing strategies and best practices. We highly recommend High Performance Marketing.
• Attend Industry Conferences – doing some business traveling is a great method for getting to know your staff on a more personal level. If you do not have any tradeshows or industry conferences in the near future, consider attending a Pragmatic Marketing or Demand Generation training course or workshop provided by Demand Metric.
• Build Personal Development Plans – use our Performance Review template to create a personal development plan for each of your staff. Work to develop star performers and experts in each key marketing competency.
• Create a Steering Committee - invite your top performer to join you at Steering Committee meetings to provide insights to your senior executives.

Sharpen your Focus with Goals

There is no question that effective goal setting can improve the performance of your department. Top performing leaders in all fields use goals to increase confidence, extend vision, and stay motivated. Use Demand Metric’s downloadable Department Goals & Individual Goals templates to break your high-level strategic plan into smaller, manageable chunks.

Benefits of Goal Setting:

• Better Time-management – operating with defined goals maximizes productivity because team members focus their effort on set deliverables.
• Increased Confidence & Moral - teams that are consistently achieving goals feel productive, and more self-confident than teams who simply react.
• Stronger Collaboration - when peers are involved in a common goal, they support each other and keep the juices flowing. Imagine the atmosphere when a Friday afternoon ‘leave early’ sales goal is about to be reached.

Reduce Employee Turnover Costs

There are many statistics and complex methodologies to support the notion that employee turnover costs are seriously affecting mid-sized enterprises. On the low end, the Hay Group reports that the cost to replace an employee is 50% of their total compensation, including benefits. On the high-end, Hewitt & Associates puts the cost between 100-150% of annual compensation. While executive management and sales staff are more costly to replace, churn in any function affects the bottom-line.

How Can You Retain Top Talent?

• Share Long-Term Vision – it is critical that all employees understand the long-term vision for the organization to find real meaning in their work. In particular, star performers who are shut out of the high-level strategy and direction of the company will be the first to defect, while costing the most.
• Conduct Employee Surveys – establish an annual Employee Satisfaction Survey to gather information and determine some of the reasons why people may be looking for greener pastures. Be sure to keep this anonymous.
• Consider Flextime – for employees who are managed based on deliverables, consider implementing a flextime policy, which allows for telecommuting. Best Buy recently instilled a Results-Only Work Environment and boosted productivity in their corporate office by over 35%.
• Offer ‘Personal’ Days - consider offering 1 day per month/quarter for a personal day. This will allow your employees to take care of business in their personal life without having to call in sick to work for fear of persecution.
• Create Focus Groups – bring leaders from each level in the organization together for informal employee focus group sessions. Discuss corporate culture, social activities, and the work/life balance at your company. Use our Facilitating Insightful Focus Groups report for advice.
• Do Exit Interviews - last but not least, be sure to conduct an exit interview. Use Demand Metric’s downloadable Exit Interview Questions Tool for help in this area.