The Top 10 Sales Questions of 2011

When faced with a tough business challenge, have you ever wanted the advice of someone that's been in your shoes?

Across the past year, SEC members have asked more than 400 questions and received nearly 2,000 answers from peers on the SEC Discussions Q&A forums.

Below is a collection of the most popular discussions that took place across 2011 – these questions shed light on the issues that were top of mind to sales executives throughout the year, and the in-depth answers provided by peers provide helpful perspective on how organizations are tackling these sales-related challenges.

Top 5 Questions from the Sales Ops Forum:

1. Sales Compensation Plan Design Ownership—"Who owns sales compensation plan design in your organization? Is it Sales Ops, Finance, HR, or some other function? Are there any pros and cons to going one way or another?"

2. Communicating with Field Sales Teams—"We are looking for ways to communicate sales direction, processes, product info, and tools to our field sales team. What channels and with what frequency have you found help your sales force receive and retain information?"

3. Variable Pay During Onboarding—"Does variable pay tied to onboarding increase retention and/or satisfaction? What tie-in(s) should there be to performance (i.e., training outcome metrics)? Does this have any impact on productivity after the onboarding period?"

4. Reducing CRM Time Burden on Reps—"What strategies have you employed to reduce the amount of time your reps spend on CRM reporting and data entry?"

5. Deploying iPads to the Field—"For those organizations whose reps currently use iPads, would you consider them effective sales tools? Have they had an impact on business results? If you had to roll them out to your sales force again, would you do anything differently?"

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Top 5 Questions from the Talent Management Forum:

1. Inspirational Video for Awards Function—"I need a short (3-5 minute) inspirational video to play prior to handing out awards to employees who went above and beyond to support the sales team's success. Does anyone have suggestions on a piece that would be inspirational, and generic enough to cover sales, customer service, and operations?"

2. Pre-Hire Assessment Vendors—"I am looking to test/screen sales candidates before bringing them in for an interview. What experiences have you had with specific vendors? Who would you recommend and what kinds of services did they provide?"

3. Decreasing Turnover in Inside Sales—"We are looking to lower our turnover rate for Inside Sales and part of that involves creating clear career development ladders for them. What does the career path for Inside Sales reps look like at other companies? Do Inside Sales reps typically migrate into field sales?"

4. Award for Completing Training—"We require significant training for all new hires (2 weeks in home office training, 2 weeks riding along with reps, repeated for 4 months). We have previously provided a GPS as a graduation gift, however, a significant portion of new hires already have one. What gifts have you provided upon training graduation, if any?"

5. Getting Managers to be Better Coaches—"We've invested a lot in getting managers to focus on coaching, but we're still seeing them resort to telling reps what to do, rather than coaching them. We're thinking about implementing increased rep feedback to hold managers accountable. Is this an effective method to improve coaching? What are other strategies?"

SEC Members, to join the Sales Ops Forum or Sales Talent Management Forum, click here.