How to Audit Your Sales Force

The audit of the sales force is a process for diagnosing the sales organisation. It highlights any weak points and areas that require development in order improve business performance. Good sales management training courses cover the key aspects of conducting the audit. A sales force audit has three main objectives. The first is to discover any existing problems within the sales organisation. The second objective is to examine the relationship between the sales force and the other areas in the business. Lastly the third aim is to identify the factors influencing the success of the sales force.

Sales Managers can conduct the audit themselves, alternatively when time and know how are limited, an outside consultancy can be used. It can sometimes be preferred to commission a critical, impartial and knowledgeable outside party to conduct the audit.

A summary of the key areas that should be examined in a sales force audit follows.

The first set of factors to be audited should be external influences on the sales force organisation. These include factors that are external to the operation such as economic, political, demographic, legal developments; competitors (strengths, weaknesses, business policy); technological trends; markets (changes, risks) and clients (buying decision process, service expectations). Also to be included in the first phase of the audit would be factors within the operation, such as organisational (company targets, organisation structure); relationship between sales and marketing, relationship with other parts of the business.

The second part of the audit should examine factors relating to the sales planning. These fall into three main areas: objectives (aptitude, measure of ability; whether they are realistic); strategy (measures employed to achieve targets; the distribution of these measures across the parts of the market) and operation (information system for sales planning and control).

The last part of the audit should look at sales force organisation factors. These can be divided into eleven areas as detailed below and as covered in sales management training courses:

1. Organisation structure: products, customers or area oriented division applicability with regard to the fulfilment of customer requirements.

2. Recruitment and selection of sales people: Personnel selection procedures (sources, costs, test procedures); job descriptions; definition of requirements; number of sales people; rate of fluctuation.

3. Leadership and motivation: leadership techniques; control measures; incentives.

4. Training and development: training aims; methods of instruction; training efficiency.

5. Remuneration: Salaries; relationship between variable and fixed salaries, the fairness of the system; comprehensibility of the system; satisfaction of the sales staff; controlling expenses.

6. Assessing sales staff: assessment procedures and criteria; setting targets as a result of the assessment.

7. Procedures: business orientation; how close to reality; flexibility; fairness; achievability; attention paid to individuals, areas, products and customer related qualities.

8. Budgeting: accuracy of budgets; fitness for achieving target and controlling employees.

9. Analysis of target or actual turnover: procedure (products; customers; area orientated; time spans).

10. Sales areas: criteria for division; potential and fairness of appointment areas.

11. Journey planning and visits: level of planning; procedures; efficiency with respect to punctuality and accuracy.

The results of a professionally conducted sales force audit can identify actions that will improve sales efficiency and effectiveness of the operation. To discover more ways to improve business performance you can attend a sales management training course.

Return to Management Articles Index

Testimonials