As a person who has been engaged in sales for three years, he is now a sales management talent. what should he do ？ 2. What books to read at which stage.

In recent years, managers of enterprises in China have begun to pay more attention to how to transplant the experience of the United States and Europe into the environment of China, and ready-made answers and suggestions for a specific problem have become more urgent. At this point, Robert Calvin, a professor at Chicago Business School, insisted: "I want to teach you how to fish, not give you fish."

On a cool Saturday morning, Robert Calvin gave a wonderful lecture on "Sales Management" in university of international business and economics. Listening to Professor Calvin's lecture, you will hear the words "process", "model" and "methodology" constantly. However, don't think that he is an academic who only talks about theory. This university of Chicago professor, who has made great achievements in business and is widely respected in academic circles, not only teaches MBA and EMBA courses at Chicago Business School, but also is a best-selling author and the president of a consulting company. His company has become a holy land for vocational skills training in sales management in the United States, but he describes the ups and downs of his company's business with yo-yos that children like to play. In the past three years, he has spent three or four months in China every year, so he knows the market in China very well. More interestingly, he summed up five similarities between China people and Americans: they like eating, shopping, studying, paying attention to family and making money. He smiled and said that he would tell everyone how to make money today, and the classroom atmosphere immediately became relaxed and lively.

Give lessons to the sales manager.

Mr Calvin first expounded sales management from three aspects: first, sales management is a step-by-step process, which can also be said to be a large system, including many details, each of which is interrelated. To grasp the overall situation, we must control the details. In the process of management, it is also necessary to understand each link of the system and its relationship, and establish models and methods for each part. Secondly, sales management is a complex subject, which covers tactics and strategies, quantity and quality, market and sales, macro and micro issues. Finally, sales management also involves the redesign of sales team to improve sales ability and performance, and certain steps should be followed in the implementation process.

"Before introducing how to carry out successful sales management, we must also understand three basic assumptions: First, the sales strength of ordinary sales personnel is not as good as that of sales managers, so the reason for ordinary sales teams is poor sales management. Second, the work of the sales manager is achieved through the work of others, and your success depends on the success of your sales staff. Third, the sales manager's job is to create a hero, not to be a hero himself. "

The author suddenly realized that a top salesperson is not necessarily an excellent sales manager, just as a world-class player is not necessarily a world-class football coach. At present, the sales managers of Chinese enterprises are facing the process of changing from sales skill type to sales management type, while Chinese enterprises have always advocated the promotion of outstanding sales personnel, but they often ignore the difference between sales and sales management. At present, Chinese enterprises are training and bringing up a large number of excellent sales personnel every year, but they lack a sufficient number of excellent coaches-first-class sales managers. Obviously, such a "sales management" course is exactly what the sales managers of China enterprises need to make up at present.

"After understanding these three assumptions, I will introduce in detail how to carry out successful sales management. In the process of telling, I will stop at any time to ask you some questions to help you stay awake. " Mr Calvin said humorously.

Let's start with recruitment.

Because Mr Calvin has rich practical experience, his methodology always combines the specific practices and processes of European and American enterprises. "In Europe and America, not all enterprises strictly implement the whole process." Helping customers find and make up for the missing links is one of the jobs of Robert Calvin Consulting. His book "Sales Management" provides readers with a practical manual for checking whether their processes conform to the suggested model at any time. Robert Calvin said with a smile, "This book I wrote will make me lose my job."

"The situation faced by American companies 20 years ago is similar to that faced by China companies at present, that is, the control over sales personnel is too strong." Due to the lack of brand or unique advantages, salespeople feel that there is little difference between working in this company and working in that company. The only difference is salary. In this way, the sales staff will resign if they are not satisfied with the salary, which will lead to the lack of trust of the sales manager and the failure to recruit too many people when recruiting and forming a team. After the recruitment, only the use is emphasized, no training is provided, and there is no other incentive, which in turn urges the sales staff to change jobs more frequently, forming a vicious circle.

At this time, the question before the sales manager becomes, where is the starting point to break this cycle? Robert Calvin's answer is: "Let multiple factors work together to turn the situation around." This requires the sales manager to implement the whole process step by step, including raising standards when recruiting sales personnel; According to certain principles, the team size is determined through quantitative analysis; Provide training for sales staff; Provide all kinds of incentives except salary to make sales staff feel proud; And a well-designed salary system.

Mr. Calvin shared with you some successful recruitment experiences of big American companies. In the United States, the salary of salespeople is very high, the recruitment process is very complicated, and the job description is also very specific, such as job content, customer relationship and so on, because the job description is conducive to the assessment of salespeople. Mr Calvin said, "Improving recruitment can be said to be the source of sales management. We divide the sales staff into two groups, the first group is excellent personnel, and the second group is ordinary personnel. Successful salespeople have some similarities: superb sales skills, optimistic and enterprising spirit and strong personality, which will be used as the criteria for future recruitment. "

"We will find the talents we need from other positions in the company or from competitors through different channels." Mr Calvin went on to say.

Mr Calvin also mentioned an important difference between China and America, that is, credit verification. In the United States, it is impossible to verify the applicant's credit in China, and it is impossible to know his performance from the company where he once worked. On the one hand, it is too expensive, and more importantly, it is not easy to accept conceptually.

Speaking of interviews, Mr Calvin said that when recruiting in the United States, interviews are first conducted by telephone. "Do some students know why?"

A classmate replied: "face-to-face interviews are sometimes very direct, but it is not easy for both sides to communicate." Another reason is that telephone interviews can save time for both parties! "

Mr Calvin nodded, then added: "The most important purpose of telephone interview is to see if the interviewer can successfully sell himself and win a face-to-face interview for himself. For example, a drug salesman needs five minutes to sell the company's products to doctors. Without sales skills, it is impossible. "

"Before introducing how to carry out successful sales management, we must also understand three basic assumptions: First, the sales strength of ordinary sales personnel is not as good as that of sales managers, so the reason for ordinary sales teams is poor sales management. Second, the work of the sales manager is achieved through the work of others, and your success depends on the success of your sales staff. Third, the sales manager's job is to create a hero, not to be a hero himself. "

In addition, in the United States, interviews also include exams, such as how to sell previous products to examine your sales skills. Such a strict recruitment process not only ensures the quality of personnel, but also reduces the flow of personnel and the losses caused to the company's business to a certain extent.

Training is the most important

Sales managers in China complain that they spend half their time selling to important customers. However, building a strong sales team is the key for enterprises to improve their sales performance. Robert Calvin, for example, said that ge's advantage lies not in what is special about its products, but in its good after-sales service and strong sales team. Whether the sales team can sell the products or services of the enterprise at a good price is very important for the enterprise to gain a foothold in the market. To build a sales team, training is naturally the most important.

Every year, European and American enterprises invest a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources to provide training for sales staff. Mr. Calvin described the training differences between China and the United States in this way: First, the purpose of pricing is different. China's pricing is to maximize income, and the United States' pricing is to maximize profits; Secondly, in China, sales managers seldom spend time training salespeople, while in the United States, it is an important job for sales managers to train salespeople how to use their time and plan their next work. Third, on-site counseling, sales managers in China do very little. Even if the sales manager did go to the scene, he was busy with other things most of the time and did not give on-site guidance to his subordinates.

Mr Calvin made detailed and original suggestions on training. For example, he suggested that an effective way to train sales staff is to give on-site guidance, that is, the sales manager and sales staff visit customers together. At this point, the sales manager's task is not to sell, but to train employees. The sales manager can see the on-site performance of the sales staff in front of customers, so as to give targeted feedback to the sales staff and point out what they have done well and what needs to be improved. More importantly, sales managers can contact customers directly, which helps to solve the problem of customer resource loss that often happens after sales staff leave the organization. In addition, it is also common for senior salespeople to train new salespeople in the United States. Old salesmen who perform well will be rewarded, which can be said to be a win-win strategy.

In order to carry out targeted training, the company tests the sales staff's knowledge of products and competitors once every six months, compares his score with the previous score and the scores of other personnel horizontally and vertically, and then conducts targeted training according to the problems. After each marketing meeting, we will investigate what sales people have learned from this meeting and listen to their suggestions. In American companies, many exams are conducted online, which is convenient for recording and inquiring. This is worth learning from China. Because of the high training cost, many companies don't conduct regular training for sales staff, which on the one hand affects the enthusiasm of sales staff, and on the other hand is not conducive to the internal communication of sales teams.

After a speech, the students nodded in succession, and it is very important to understand these for standardizing and improving the sales management of Chinese enterprises.

Salary design varies from person to person.

Robert Calvin reminded everyone that in order to make salespeople care about profits instead of income, they should be inclined in salary design, that is, commission should be determined according to gross profit margin and salespeople should be encouraged to pay attention to prices. How much reward a successful salesperson should get depends on the complexity of sales. The income from partnership and knowledge sales is higher than that from relationship marketing, and the income of these two salesmen is higher than that from actual transactions, so the complexity of sales determines the level of salary.

Mr Calvin listed four factors: first, the influence of salespeople on sales. If you are selling a brand of products, or products that are advertised a lot, it means that sales staff have little influence on sales, so fixed salary is the main factor. If a salesperson sells a new product of a new company, the salesperson plays an important role in the success of the sales, so his salary will account for a large proportion. Second, what kind of salesman do you want to be? Floating salary will attract those who are more ambitious and motivated, while fixed salary will attract those who want to be promoted to management positions in the company. Third, look at the product type. Fourth, the influence of the sales staff's action results on the company's success.

Mr Calvin told everyone that American companies improve their salary system every year, because their products, customer base and competitive position change every year. The popular practice in Europe and America is the method of team motivation, that is, a team will be rewarded collectively after reaching its goal, and the employees who have contributed the most to the company's success will be rewarded with the highest share.

In addition, non-monetary incentives are also important. In the United States, a combination of top-down and bottom-up methods is implemented. Salespeople have a deeper understanding of customers, so adopting a bottom-up approach will greatly improve the accuracy of forecasting. Every year or quarter, there will be a conversation between the company and the sales staff, who will present data to predict and discuss the impact of the business environment on the company, such as the impact of the Olympic Games or the launch of new products. Through this dialogue, the company will get more accurate forecasts. In addition, the model of 10- 10 is adopted: each salesperson lists his 10 largest business, 10 potential business and 10 promising business, and also lets the salesperson predict the best and worst situations and their possibilities. Therefore, every salesperson will have a basic forecast and management of his work. In China, sales managers often don't trust the data provided by sales staff, and basically adopt top-down communication mode, which greatly affects the authenticity and effectiveness of sales forecast.

In the United States, there are a lot of non-monetary incentives, and salespeople really want others to realize their own value, so companies will have different titles and award different awards according to different evaluation projects. The general manager will also write to the sales staff to encourage them. If a salesperson works long hours, the company will give him a title. For example, he started as a salesperson, and after achieving certain work performance, he was promoted to sales manager and then to sales director. Set up a sales club in the company, and the sales staff have the opportunity to communicate with the company's top management. Salespeople are psychologically motivated. In addition, the sales staff lined up according to the performance and displayed it publicly, which greatly improved the incentive effect.

The sales manager decided.

The sales manager has great control over the number of sales staff and the width of the sales field. Calvin said that at this point, the European and American models are very different from the China model. In Europe and America, sales areas are divided according to potential and sales volume. Why is this important? Because often 20% of the company's sales staff can generate 60% to 70% of the sales. If the sales areas have similar sales potential, the whole team will achieve the maximum sales performance. The question is how do you evaluate the potential of the company's products and services in a certain geographical range?

How many salespeople a region needs depends on the market potential on the one hand and the workload and working ability of salespeople on the other. For example, if you look at the number of three types of ABC customers owned by salespeople, A customers require a certain frequency of visits, such as once a month, B customers require another frequency of visits, such as once a quarter, and C customers may need to visit once every six months. According to the type of customers and the frequency of visits, the work intensity of sales staff can be obtained. A salesperson may need to visit 1000 times a year to meet the requirements of ABC's three types of customers.

By comparing the workload and visiting ability, we can judge whether the workload and ability of salespeople match. According to the above analysis results and market potential, the sales manager can make appropriate adjustments to the region.

Let's evaluate the ability of salespeople: a salesperson can visit four times a day, 20 times a week, 80 times a month and 960 times a year. This is the ability of salespeople to visit. By comparing the workload and visiting ability, we can judge whether the workload and ability of salespeople match. According to the above analysis results and market potential, the sales manager can make appropriate adjustments to the region. In addition, as the center of cost, income and profit, the company should evaluate its performance regularly or irregularly, first calculate the income created by the sales staff, and then calculate its profit after deducting the product cost. Sometimes, salespeople need to provide their work schedules in order to effectively evaluate their work. Because the survey found that if salespeople spend little time with customers, their sales performance will be greatly reduced.