Sales Management
Who currently controls the market, we might wonder? Who controls business in the modern era? Who determines the types of goods to be produced or services to be provided? The "Customer" is the straightforward or well-known response to each of these queries. Yes, the seller's monopoly has given way to a buyer's market. Sales professionals face a variety of difficulties in today's global marketplace when it comes to meeting the constantly shifting needs and expectations of customers. Recent globalization of goods and services has increased the complexity of the idea of customer need. Due to the abundance of information that is easily accessible online and in the media, customers are now well-informed decision makers. Additionally, how a salesperson can address fundamental issues and ultimately add value to a good or service is what today's consumers are most interested in. Therefore, the role of sales management is now more crucial than ever for success in this new, cutthroat environment. As a result, Sales Management is faced with a new challenge: adapting new management and motivational strategies to this new environment.
Defining Sales Management
"Planning, direction, and control of personnel selling, including recruiting, selecting, equipping, assigning, routing, supervising, paying, and motivating as these tasks apply to the personnel sales force," is what the American Marketing Association (AMA) defines as sales management. Planning, implementing, and managing personal contact programs created to meet the company's sales and profit goals are the easiest ways to define it. Sales management includes managing all of the operations, including pricing, physical distribution, market research, advertising, sales promotion, and personal selling.
The ultimate objective of Sales Management is to influence consumers of the target market to get the sales orders. To be more inclusive, Sales Management comprises:
- Building a right sales strategy
- Hiring a right team
- Creating the right compensation plan, territories and quota
- Setting the right projections
- Motivating the sales team
- Tracking revenue against goals
- Resolving conflicts
- Training and coaching sales personnel
- Managing processes
- Getting the sale
- Closing the deal
Objectives of Sales Management
Sales management is the process of effectively and efficiently achieving an organization's sales goals through resource planning, staffing, training, management, and control. Sales are what drive an organization's growth. Therefore, one of the most crucial roles in a firm is managing that process.
Primary Objectives
There are three primary objectives of Sales Management or a sales manager namely:
(1) Increasing Sales Volume
(2) Contribution to Profit and
(3) Continued Growth
In this instance, the sales executives assist in carrying out these goals. The top hierarchy must, however, lay out the plans for achieving these goals. The top management should offer socially conscious products that are promoted in a way that both meets and doesn't go against customer expectations. As a result, top management, marketing, and sales work closely together in sales management.
Financial Objectives
Achieving financial result is another objective of Sales Management and therefore, Sales Management has financial implications as well.
Sales-Cost of Sales Gross Profit
Gross Margin - Expenses = Net profit
Therefore, a change in sales will directly impact the company's net profit. Therefore, managing and maintaining sales is crucial to the continued financial viability of the organization, product, or service.
Therefore, the organization's position and desired outcomes are used to determine the sales objectives. To provide a sales estimate, top management works together with the marketing and sales managers.
Sales Management Strategies
A sales strategy is a plan that puts a company's brand or product in a favorable position to gain a competitive edge. A focus on target market customers and meaningful communication with them are made possible by effective sales strategies. Salespeople must understand how their goods and services can meet the needs and demands of customers. This is communicated by a successful sales strategy so that the sales force can focus on the right customers at the right time. As a result, considering long-term sales goals, examining the business sales cycle, and speaking with salespeople about their individual career goals are all necessary for planning and developing an effective sales strategy. These exercises give business owners and managers a deeper understanding of the sales cycles, seasonal shifts, and what drives the sales team. Sales managers should develop monthly and weekly strategies based on the long-term strategy after developing a long-term sales strategy based on long-term goals. We'll now examine various types of strategies used by sales organizations generally.
1. Direct Strategy
When speaking with a customer using a direct sales strategy, salespeople criticize their rivals. They discuss each feature of the rival product and contrast it with their own. Negative selling is a direct sales strategy in which sales are based on the opponents' negative attitudes.
2. Indirect Strategy
Without ever mentioning the competitor's products or services by name, indirect sales approaches use more deceptive techniques by highlighting features and advantages not present in the competition's goods or services. This more sophisticated positive sales strategy necessitates market research and competitor analysis.
3. Relationship Strategy
The strategy insists on forging a partnership-style relationship with the clients, where mutual aid, trust, and long-term objectives are fostered. In this case, the customer is seen as a partner.
4. Double-Win Strategy
It is simply a win-win situation and both the customer and sales person come out of the sale deal with a sense of satisfaction. Neither seems to have taken advantage of the other and both have been benefited personally and professionally from the deal.
5. Integrated Strategy
Integrated sales strategy is nothing but consolidation of selling and distribution strategies.
6. Client Centered Strategy
It focuses the entire sales process and efforts on the needs, challenges, and successes of the client. The strategy necessitates having the most complete understanding of the client as a person and as a member of the professional network, including everyone who might interact with him or her at work. Additionally, it necessitates an understanding of the client's unique perspective, attitude, beliefs, opinions, responses to the present circumstances, etc.
7. Hard Sales Vs Soft Sales Strategy
A sales team's primary goal is to find new customers and cultivate existing ones, both of which are crucial components of a sales strategy. The salesperson may employ one of two strategies during the identification process, as shown below:
|
Hard Strategy
|
Soft Strategy
|
|
Concerned
for Self
|
Concerned
for Customers
|
|
Cannied
Presentation
|
Open
for Discussion
|
|
Talking
|
Listening
|
|
Pushing
Product
|
Providing
Buying Opportunities
|
|
Presenting
Features
|
Presenting
Benefits
|
Hence, from the above we may infer that the hard sales takes place without acknowledging the buyers; whereas buyer is greatly acknowledged in soft sales.
Territorial Strategy
A territorial sales strategy may be used when selling one product line to a single industry with customers in numerous locations. A sales manager will use this tactic to designate sales representatives to exclusive territories in a particular area. Customers in that territory will be sold complete product lines made up of numerous products by these representatives. The sale of kitchen equipment is a good illustration of this tactic. When selling to restaurants, school canteens, and cafeterias in their assigned territory, a sales representative for a manufacturer of commercial food equipment will typically promote the company's entire line of products.
Product Sales Force Strategy
When a company sells along product lines, a product sales force strategy is frequently employed. With this tactic, a sales manager will demand that their agents concentrate on selling a single product or a small number of carefully chosen products. Managers employ this tactic when there are many complex products. A salesperson who uses this strategy focuses on pitching doctors and other healthcare professionals on particular products that are essential to their specialized field of medicine. Therefore, developing an effective sales strategy requires thorough business analysis, market research, awareness of competitors' activities, and awareness of current trends. Therefore, creating an effective sales strategy presents a number of difficulties for sales managers.
Functions of Sales Executive
Basically, a sales executive has two sets of functions: Operating and Planning. The relative emphasis that sales executive offers to the operating and planning function varies with
(1) The type of products,
(2) The size of company, and
(3) The type of supervisory organization.
Customarily, sales executive at all organizational levels devote more time and attention to planning function than to operating function. We will highlight below various operating and planning functions of a sales executive.
Operating Functions
The operating functions include:
i) Sales force management
ii) Handling relationship with personnel in other company departments, middlemen and, customers
iii) Communicating and coordinating with other marketing executives
iv) Reporting to some superior executives (like that of marketing vice president)
Planning Functions
A sales executive's planning function includes those connected with the sales program. These are:
i) Setting personal selling goals
ii) Developing sales program to achieve these goals
iii) Formulating sales policies and strategies
iv) Putting together plans for their implementation
Other Functions
A sales executive performs some other functions as well. They are:
i) Participating in marketing decision by providing sales information
ii) Helping in preparing sales budget and framing sales quotas
iii) Helping in designing sales territories
iv) Assisting the company to understand market and provide services accordingly
