The interviews indicated that the salespeople control system in the case company is not working in the most effective way. The salespeople are controlled mostly by outcome-based metrics which do not always reveal the possible problems in the selling actions themselves. The management cannot therefore assess the reasons why the salesperson’s outcomes were what they were during the control period. Simple metrics that would measure the actions, and especially how the actions are performed, could be used to evaluate the training needs of the salesperson so that he/she could improve the selling methods. Activity-based measures can also be used as targets for the salespeople which would encourage the salespeo-ple to develop themselves and increase their knowledge. The activity-based targets suit well for remuneration basis as they are fully controlled by the salespeople themselves. Thus, the motivation would also increase when the salespeople feel that their actions can have an effect on their rewards. However, the remuneration system of the salespeople should also be changed from fixed salary to a variable remuneration which would probably better encourage the salespeople to pursue the targets. Since the salespeople are in daily contact with the customers they are likely to possess valuable information which could also benefit others, so one of the rewarding basis could be how much knowledge and information is the salesperson sharing. This would also promote knowledge sharing inside the organization. Thus, salespeople’s training and motivating with incen-tives is likely to lead to better success in sales.
6 SUMMARY
The introduction of the study presented the main objective and the main research question “how sales steering can be optimally supported with business information and knowledge?” The introduction chapter offered a brief overview to the main theoretical concepts used in the study and ex-plained what was meant when talking about sales steering. The previous studies did not offer any explanations for the subject, so the study was started with defining the concepts that belong to the sales steering. The study was limited to management level since the objective of the study was to find a model which supports the information needs of the sales management. The research method was set to be a normative case study, and the empirical evidence was collected through interviews with the rele-vant people of the case company.
Theoretical frame for the study concentrated on sales steering, business intelligence, and knowledge management. The main sources for theoreti-cal evidence were scientific articles. Sales steering was considered to be a comprehensive process which consists of three different phases: planning, guiding, and monitoring. The planning phase’s focus is on creating market-ing and sales strategies for the organization, and usmarket-ing them as a basis for price and volume management. Guiding and monitoring phases include the concrete steering actions for the sales function and people which are monitored with different sales control systems. The phases require differ-ent kinds of information from the reporting systems, so the information sources and presentation tools were analyzed in the business information chapter. As the information is used in the decision-making process it was seen useful to analyze also the role of knowledge management in provid-ing support for the sales management.
The interviews revealed some issues with the current sales steering prac-tices in the case company. The case company was seen to handle the internal processes well due to the extensive use of internal,
outcome-based metrics. The activity-outcome-based metrics were however lacking, and also external information was not effectively used. The interviews made also clear that the information presentation was not managed properly since the daily reporting required a multitude of separate reports to be run from the variety of systems. This had caused misinterpretations of the figures as the systems allow the users to use several different criteria, and there had been no standardized way of running the reports. The study suggest-ed that the reporting system’s interface should be changsuggest-ed to a standard-ized dashboard which would have predefined basic criteria for scrutinizing the numbers but the users would still be able to change the perspectives.
Another suggestion was to store other reports that are not presented in a dashboard to a shared place where people would be able to review other’s reports which would enhance learning and knowledge sharing. Based on the interviews and analysis a roadmap for management’s current and fu-ture information needs was formed. The roadmap includes the most im-portant metrics and information sources that the management is and should be using in the sales steering process. The study also suggested that the field salespeople would be better able to serve the customers if they had a CRM system in use. The CRM system could be used to store customer information which could be used in thorough sales planning, and allocating necessary resources based on the customer needs.
The study was limited to scrutinize the information needs of the sales ex-ecutives but some of the results are also applicable for the individual salesperson level. However, the results are based on the opinions of the sales executives so in order to create an entirely compatible system for the management and field sales, the opinions of the salespeople should be researched. Also, the findings of this study are based on a case study and therefore may not be eligible on another case, since there may be dif-ferences between industries.