Freelance Sales: The Pros and Cons Explained

When speaking of per­for­mance man­age­ment, many think of the annu­al per­for­mance review process. But the annual per­for­mance review or appraisal is only a small com­po­nent of employee per­for­mance man­age­ment. 

Employee performance management goes much further than the traditional annual review. It involves regular purposeful interaction between management and employees that is focused on job performance as well as direction and support for the employees.

According to Gallup, organisations that successfully engage their customers and their employees, experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes compared to an organisation without engaged employees or engaged customers.

What is employee per­for­mance man­age­ment?

Performance management defines your interaction with an employee at every step of the way in between these major life cycle occurrences.

According to the definition pro­vid­ed by Michael Arm­strong in his Hand­book of Per­for­mance Man­age­ment,

​“Per­for­mance man­age­ment is the con­tin­u­ous process of improv­ing per­for­mance by set­ting indi­vid­ual and team goals which are aligned to the strate­gic goals of the organ­i­sa­tion, plan­ning per­for­mance to achieve the goals, review­ing and assess­ing progress, and devel­op­ing the knowl­edge, skills and abil­i­ties of peo­ple.”

Note how he mentions that per­for­mance man­age­ment is a con­tin­u­ous process — not an annual event. 

A per­for­mance man­age­r should, there­fore, bring togeth­er dif­fer­ent, inte­grat­ed activ­i­ties to form an ongo­ing​”per­for­mance man­age­ment cycle”. Ideal performance management should make every interaction opportunity with an employee into a learning opportunity.

We have put together some tips for optimising your employee performance management system.

1. Identify the goals of your performance management initiatives

As you develop a performance management program, you need to understand what you want to accomplish from it. Ask the following questions to define your goals: 

• Do you want to increase productivity?
• Does your organisation want to identify potential leaders and develop them?
• Do you want to optimise the incentives process?
• Are you seeking to improve employee retention or engagement?

If you know what you want your program to do, it will be easier to build it to accomplish that goal.

Related: FREE guide! Learn everything you need to know about creating the ultimate Digital Employee Experience .

2. Align goals with a performance plan

Now that you have set your goals, develop a performance plan to go alongside. Develop short term goals. As long term goals can overwhelm the employees even before they start.

3. Monitor progress towards performance plan

Review employee performance regularly. Use metrics and analytics to track how goals are progressing. This will keep the process transparent and allow you to support your employees, whenever necessary.

4. Offer actionable feedback

During the feedback sessions, tensions can arise if the feedback is not constructive and actionable. It is not very helpful for employee morale to blame and point fingers. Instead performance manager should guide employees towards future success. 

Managers should make sure to keep feedback professional and remember to focus on behaviour, rather than characteristics.

5. Take advantage of multiple-source feedback

Ask employees to provide feedback for each other. This will give the performance manager a more holistic view of employee performance. It will also help them understand the challenges that teams are facing, and be able to better offer feedback.

Related: How to Manage Results vs. Efforts and the Communications Gap - FREE Ebook!

6. Provide frequent training to your employees

Regular coaching can help identify and solve problems before they get out of hand. Monthly or quarterly meetings should be held to help keep employees on the right track. It also helps to organise cross-functional coaching sessions. This helps employees - and managers - understand what other departments do and operate.

7. Accept that employees’ are not always the source of problems

It is easy to assume for the management that problems are always caused by employees, but that simply is not the case. Problems can come from various external factors such as availability of supplies, internal processes that are causing issues, or organisational policies. Seek out the other source of problems as precisely as you can in order to fix them.

8. Acknowledge and reward employee achievements 

You cannot expect employees to stay motivated if their achievements are never rewarded. Yet, many organisations overlook this key element. Make sure that employees are not only compensated but also recognised for their hard work. You can rest in peace that they will continue performing for your organisation.

9. Foster a performance-oriented culture in your team

Make sure that your organisation has shared values and cultural alignment. A sense of shared goals, beliefs and expectations among employees creates a pleasant workplace. And a harmonious workplace is good for productivity, positivity and eventually better performances. 

In conclusion...

We can all agree that performance management has a significant benefits for employees and managers, as well as for the company as a whole.

For any Human Resources department, performance management is an important system for onboarding, developing and retaining employees, as well as reviewing their performance. 

If you are a performance manager or human resource manager it may seem overwhelming to keep up with the entire process. But there are tools to make your life easier at work. 

Simple Strata can help you align your entire employee performance management strategy. 

Learn More about SimpleStrata

Every sales manager knows that taking proper care of the sales team is an unwritten rule of a business to achieve greater heights.  

Every business owner dreams of a sales team that is 100% motivated all the time. Unfortunately, this dream is often not a practical reality.

As the pressure of digitisation on sales functions has grown in the past couple of years, companies are looking for new approaches to optimise sales enablement. 

In some ways, empowering a a sales team simply means giving them greater autonomy of decision making and thereby brings better outputs. Sales managers seek out for better ways to do so because no marketing mixture is going to be everlastingly successful!

Here are six ways to empower your sales team.

Quality training – Providing right sales coaching

Training is one of the core elements in empowering any workforce.  This is also true for a sales team. There are always new technological developments happening in a company's environment. If they are more technical in nature, giving proper training to the team members is a proactive approach. 

The overall skill developed by the sales team is depending upon the quality of the training they receive. It is very important to pay attention to each member and shape them as equally trained and skilled.

Communication and collaboration – Keep everyone on the same page

Nobody needs to tell you that communication and collaboration are the keys to have a healthy sales campaign. It is all about having up-to-date information and keeping everyone on the same page.

Uninterrupted communication through relentless collaboration enables greater dynamism. Authorities should make sure that there is no communication gap and no one in the team is left behind.

Have the back of your sales team

Though sales persons are perceived as the smart ones, there needs to be constant empowerment. They should be more customer-centric for the most part.  To have greater customer focus, it is important to have strong back up and this can be provided by the manager who offers ultimate support with solid marketing campaigns.

These campaigns should have the essence that attract and keep the customers hooked. In a way, the management is providing them ultimate authority to do more things which is aimed at bringing more fulfilling outcomes.

Offer them incentives to go an extra mile

Offering more money, time off or a great gift is another great way to give employees a goal to work toward. A recent Aberdeen study shows that non-cash incentives are usually more effective than financial compensation, with top performers 31% more likely to prefer non-cash options.

Your best bet of getting the right incentive for your employees is by giving choices and let them vote on what incentive they’d most prefer. It will give your employees a greater sense of involvement, kickstarting a refreshed sense of excitement.

Arm the sales team with the latest technology

This should be cited as the most important point because, without the contribution of IT, organisations cannot dream of making it big. These days, marketing success needs smart technology solutions. If the sales team needs to be out in the field, why don’t they have a smart sales application?

We must agree that a sales application can do a lot of automation tasks which have been actually pestering the hapless sales team. It is going to be a great remedy as the features are most advanced and help to sort out several sales issues.

Use Your E-Commerce Site to Empower Your Sales Team

Enabling self-service for B2B buyers isn’t the only benefit of digital commerce. By bringing the sales team into the digital channel, B2B merchants can target the most complex parts of the purchasing experience and turn them into opportunities to retain and grow each account.

The competition in B2B commerce is growing, and the increasing expectations for great digital experiences mean that even long-time industry leaders will need to evolve in order to stay ahead. Empowering the sales channel to provide insightful, consultative selling across all their accounts will resolve the channel conflict that many companies struggle with, accelerating growth for years to come.

According to Nexthink, Digital Employee Experience (DEX) is an employee's holistic experience with the digital workplace that IT provides; allowing them to be productive and engaged.

What is the purpose of Digital Employee Experience at organisations?

DEX aims to optimise and improve the impact of the digital workplace on its employees. The digital employee experience incorporates how employees work in their workplace, what tools and technology they use, and the culture they exist within. The experience touches on different levels: the physical, sensorial, emotional and rational.

What Do Employees Want in Their Ideal Digital Workplace?

According to CMSWire, digital employee experience is linked to key business outcomes. In a survey conducted by VMware, employees identified the following digital experience factors  as the most critical:

• They want to easily find and install the right apps needed for work. 
• They want to access necessary apps and data on their first day of work.
• They want to easily work remotely from outside the office.
• They want to have the freedom to work from personally-owned devices.
• They want to be able to choose between Android or iOS and Mac or PC for work devices.

The expectation for employees around the world is that workplace IT needs to mirror the seamless technology experiences they have in their daily lives. 

What are the current challenges faced by Employees in Digital Workplace

Today, the average enterprise deploys over 300 mission-critical apps. A single employee have around a dozen or more tools in their daily workflow.

But unless the management fulfils employees’ digital needs — with proper onboarding, onscreen guidance, and adequate in-app support — they should expect their digital employee experience to suffer.

Now that organisations are focusing greater attention on the employee experience, the need to understand and fulfils employee needs has become a top priority.

Here are some of the the top challenges faced by employees in a digital workplace for DEX. 

• Not a High Priority: While in its infancy, DEX is relatively unknown factor. Being such a complex concept, organisations do not have a full understanding of its benefits and therefore do not regard it as a priority.
• No Clear DEX Strategy: Similarly, without a clear plan, a DEX strategy fails. With no clear vision, the digital experience of employees is overlooked in favour of more traditional priorities.
• Different Focus: Unfortunately, many organisations regard their customers as their main priority. As a result, focus is on getting all resources for the CX right, rather than concentrate on its employees.
• Digital Limitations: Low levels of tech in the workplace pose a challenge to anyone keen to implement DEX in their organisation. With a heavy reliance on paper-based processes and methods of work, the digital workplace is incomplete and unoptimised for DEX.

So How Can You Improve the Digital Employee Experience at Your Workplace?

A recent IBM and Globeforce study showed that:

• 80% of executives rated employee experience as ‘important’ or ‘very important’.
• 59% of executives are either not ready or only somewhat ready to address this challenge.
• When employee engagement increases, there is a corresponding increase in employee retention – up to 78%.

Learn everything you need to know about how to create the ultimate digital employee experience in this free guide.

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