Writing about sales IN MEDIA

In the business world, knowing your place in the market is not a luxury but a necessity. This is especially true for the sales department, which directly impacts a company’s financial performance. 

Benchmarking has long become an essential tool for companies striving to remain competitive in the market. Essentially, it’s a systematic process of comparing a company’s performance metrics with those of competitors and industry leaders. 

Sales benchmarking is a systematic process of comparing your sales department’s performance indicators with market leaders or successful competitors. This tool helps companies find objective growth benchmarks, identify weaknesses in their processes, and implement proven practices. In today’s business environment, with growing competition and increasingly demanding customers, benchmarking has transformed from a trendy term into a necessary element of strategic sales management.

Have you ever caught yourself thinking: “Our sales department metrics are not bad… probably”? This “probably” often becomes a problem for many companies. Without understanding the market context, your KPIs are just a set of numbers that don’t give a complete picture of the real situation. When lead-to-deal conversion is 15%, is this a good result or are you losing customers that competitors are taking? If your average check grew by 10% over the year – are you ahead of the market or lagging behind the overall dynamics?

Every sales department head knows that a motivated salesperson brings the company 3-4 times more revenue than an employee just “putting in hours.” A properly configured motivation system directly affects not only financial performance but also team loyalty, reduced staff turnover, and the overall atmosphere in the team. The problem is that there’s no universal motivation recipe – what works for B2B sales with a long deal cycle may completely fail in retail or SaaS business.

Cold sales is one of the most challenging business areas. Rejections, constant emotional tension, and long sales cycles wear out even experienced salespeople. Classic motivation schemes based exclusively on a percentage of closed deals show low effectiveness in this area. They don’t account for the specifics of cold contacts, where success is measured not only by final sales but also by a properly built funnel.

Familiar situation? Management sets ambitious sales targets, implements a new motivation system, but the results leave much to be desired. Employees are dissatisfied, goals aren’t achieved, and bonuses feel like a lottery. The reason usually lies in copying someone else’s KPIs without adapting them to the company’s specifics, creating non-transparent bonus schemes, or creating conflict between salespeople’s and business goals. When a manager strives to “close” a deal at any cost to get a bonus, while the company needs long-term customer relationships – conflict is inevitable.

Even the most carefully designed motivation system loses its effectiveness over time. Yesterday’s incentives no longer work, sales managers “play with metrics,” and the team becomes less interested in achieving company goals. If you’ve noticed that sales results are disappointing and employees have become less active – it may be time to audit your personnel motivation system.

Creating an effective motivation system for a sales department is one of the most challenging tasks for a manager, especially when it comes to sales department management in different business models. There simply isn’t a universal solution. What works excellently in retail sales can completely fail when working with corporate clients. Why? Because B2B and B2C models are fundamentally different by nature, which means they require completely different approaches to employee motivation.

A familiar situation: the sales department works at full capacity, managers close deals one after another, the plan is fulfilled at 120%, but company profits are not growing or even falling. Meanwhile, the best sales managers can earn more than the business owner! The root of the problem often lies in an incorrectly configured system of commissions and bonuses. Many business owners build motivation based on revenue, without considering deal margins. As a result, managers actively sell, but the business remains without profit. In this article, we will analyze typical mistakes in the sales manager commission system, show how to correctly calculate bonuses using a sales commission formula, and help you build a motivation system that will work for both salespeople and the business owner.