Now, let's move to input factors. Input factors deal with the salesperson's behaviors and activities leading to sales. Often the source of this information comes from the reports submitted by the salespeople or the sales manager's direct observation. Often input factors help to explain output factors. The first three factors on this chart, calls per day, days worked, and selling time versus non-selling time, should correlate to a salesperson's performance. If a person makes more calls per day, it stands to reason their sales ought to reflect that increase in activity. Do you see how these are considered inputs, that is, behaviors that lead to sales? Direct selling expenses include a salesperson's compensation, benefits, travel, and entertainment expenses. And it is usually expressed as a percentage of sales. This is like a batting average in that it indicates a salesperson's relative efficiency in gaining sales. Of course, these kinds of numbers require lots of interpretation. Sometimes high selling expenses is because a salesperson is working in a new territory and doing a lot of prospecting. Non-selling activities include things like product displays, communication to customers and prospects, training, service calls, responding to customer complaints. Sometimes we call these customer service and these help to keep customers satisfied. The next input factor is personal efforts of salespeople such as time management. The quality of sales presentations and handling objections. Next on the slide is knowledge. By knowledge we mean a salesperson's product, company, customer, and competitor knowledge. Obviously, a salesperson has to be knowledgeable about their products in order to be successful. Customer relations deals with your customers. And often is measured by customer satisfaction surveys. Finally, personal appearance, as well as personality and attitude, are admittedly subjective evaluations and are often included as input factors. Now this list of factors can be a bit intimidating. But remember that most companies selectively use a few of these and not everything. Now that we have covered the output and input factors, we need to address what is the most appropriate appraisal technique.