Factors that Positively Influence a Sales Person’s Sales Performance
Introduction
A successful sales performance is crucial to any revenue-driven organization. Understanding the factors that influence whether a deal is closed successfully or falls through in different contexts is essential for both salespersons and the organizations for which they work. An individual salesperson who consistently misses his/her sales goals will be forced to earn less, miss promotion and bonus opportunities, and may even be forced out by employers.
It is critical for any organization that has to ”sell” either products or ideas to the public to quickly and accurately pinpoint the factors behind any struggling sales performance and correct them to stay ahead of the competition.
Literature Review
1. Regulatory Knowledge
The Institutional theory states that firms are greatly affected by external forces acting on the organization’s elements. One of these factors includes the various formal sets of rules in governmental initiatives that include regulatory and legislative acts .Whether the salesperson or an organization, in general, like or understand regulations or not, compliance is essential. Salespersons that follow the rules of the trade, especially those constantly changing, are more likely to maintain a competitive edge over the competition.
A salesperson who fails to update his/her knowledge as industry regulations change is more likely to incur hefty penalties and even deal with legal issues. This would cause them to fall behind the competition. Since the day’s regulatory frameworks are designed to inform sales strategies, refreshing one’s knowledge about what is constantly changing is essential to becoming a successful salesperson
- Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence (also known as Emotional Quotient or EQ) has been recognized as an essential element in both personal and professional success since the 1960s. One of the greatest mistakes that organizations make when hiring salespersons is focusing on developing hard selling skills while completely neglecting emotional intelligence skills.EQ is the ability of a person to be aware of his or her own, as well as other people’s emotions, and use it to manage them in an empathetic and productive manner
It is proven that emotionally intelligent salespeople perform better than their non-emotionally intelligent counterparts because they have self-awareness and can understand how their actions affect others’ emotions. This group of people can manage their time and energy well in different circumstances, practice self-regulation, or impulse control better, and they have ever-evolving social skills that come in handy to salespersons. Since EQ is also linked to empathy and motivation, salespersons who are emotionally intelligent are more successful than those who are not .
2. Market Orientation
The broader question that begs an answer is, what does it mean to be market-oriented? A market-oriented organization can be described as one that values close customer relationships and relies on current market information to guide them in strategic decision making .A salesperson who is market-oriented is more likely to perform better than another who is less market-oriented because they understand the market almost as well as they do the products or ideas they are selling.
Studies have proven that the individual salesperson’s market orientation and the market orientation of the organizations for which they work have a tremendously positive effect on their performances .The findings in the literature show that a salesperson’s market orientation is the necessary bridge that formulates the relationship between the organization’s market orientation and the salesperson’s performance.
3. Individual Level Factors
The performance of a salesperson can be influenced positively by three types of factors: organizational internal and external factors as well as the individual’s personal factors. Since salespeople must be held accountable for meeting reasonable yet aggressive targets, the salespersons are expected to use their skills and knowledge to moderate the relationship between regulatory matters and their individual sales performance.
The individual factors are the moderators of the relationship between a salesperson’s emotional intelligence, market orientation, and regulatory awareness and sales performance. It is, therefore, imperative that an individual exerts their knowledge and available organization resources to boost their sales performance .As organizations face great pressure to make immediate sales and focus on the back end of the sales pipeline where deals are closed. The salespersons on the front are under immense pressure from the organization and competitors in the sales team to make more sales and meet their revenue goals.
References
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