Enhancing Return on Salesforce Investment: Reallocating Incentives and Training Resources With Intrinsic Valuation Approach

Abstract

In most sales organizations, salesforce performance evaluation has mostly relied on reflective metrics such as sales volume, revenue, and manager’s evaluations of salesforce, and hence they have limited insight into how a salesperson will do going forward and what types of training and incentives will be most effective. Sales organizations should emphasize sustaining and improving their salesforce performance by proactively reallocating investment in incentives and training resources. The main question is what type of incentives and training will bring out the best in a high performer or help a promising sales employee improve? Salesperson’s intrinsic value measurement and analysis provides directions for finding an answer. With this approach, sales organizations can then make strategic decisions about rewards and training optimization. These findings will help organizations reallocate their expenditure levels (i.e., training and incentive investments) to maximize salesperson’s intrinsic value, enhance salesperson’s future performance and ultimately boost revenue and profitability.