The sales department is, for obvious reasons, one of the first operational areas where companies see the need for a Performance Management solution. If you can improve sales performance, the results will show on the bottom line.

Sales Performance Management (SPM) is Performance Management for the sales organisation and is often a complementary solution to the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. According to Gartner, SPM falls into CRM application domain bucket, under the aegis of sales force automation, technologically speaking. But there is a major difference. While CRM handles presales data, or everything leading up to a sale and to ensure that the sale happens, SPM leverages reams of postsales data. A SPM solution enables companies to acquire histories of territory alignment, account assignments and hierarchies, as well as past quotas, targets and objectives to allow analyses of trends with past practices.

SPM is a tool for combining all relevant data for vital sales tasks:

• Coverage/territory management: Link customers to sales team/persons

• Budget: Break down budgets into quotas for teams and individuals.

• Actuals/achievement: Track actual revenue and cost from the CRM system

• Forecasting: Make timely and good forecasts based on up-to-date information

• Achievement: How will my bonus be based on these achievements?

• Trends: See the big picture with all info in the same tool.

• Operational KPIs: Focus the salesteam on what is essential right now. Example: quality, profit, campaigns, etc

• Reporting: Save time with easy to build reports for suppliers, managers, key-customers etc.