The Supervision Activity

Supervision refers to actual overseeing and directing day to day activities of salespeople. A manager can supervise salespeople in two ways: indirectly and directly.

Indirect supervisory methods A sales manager may be responsible for 3 to 12 salespeople. This is a lot of people to oversee. Most sales organizations employ the following methods to indirectly help their manager stay abreast of their people’s day to day activities:

• Call reports let the manager know which customers and prospects were contacted and on what day. Many call reports have a brief description of the salesperson’s activities and accomplishment for each call.

• Expense reports show where the salesperson spent the money, how much traveling was done.
• Compensation directs sales personnel’s activities. Commissions, bonuses, and contests influence the time and effort sales person’s invest in their jobs.
• Sales analysis report shows what was sold and how much was sold.

The methods described above are indirect methods for supervision. The best way to supervise people is, however, is with direct methods.

Direct supervisory methods Three common methods for directly supervising people are the telephone or e-mail, sales meetings, and working with each salesperson.

• The telephone and e-mail are essential tools for contacting salespeople and for salespeople to talk with the manager. Both are faster and cheaper than traveling to see a salesperson.
• Sales meetings take place frequently, often once a month.
• This is a great time to provide information, training, and inspection.
• Work with often occurring once a month refer to the manager‘s routine visits with each salesperson. The manager meets with each person in his or her sales territory for reasons such as:
• Troubleshooting calling on a specific account to handle a specific problem.
• Joining the sales pro in a team effort in which both combine their selling talents to close a certain account.
• Training seasoned sales pro to sell a new product or an established product in a new way.
• Introducing a seasoned salesperson to a new territory.