Business-To-Business Marketing - Essay Example

?Running Head: Business-to-Business Marketing Business-to-Business Marketing [Institute’s Business-to-Business Marketing MARKETING COMMUNICATION TOOLS The business world employs a diverse range of marketing tools to promote their company and products and now this section will include discussion of a few to allow CCS to select the best out of them. These may include use of websites, brochures, and mailing (Armstrong & Kotler, pp. 23-29, 2008). The basic aim of using these marketing techniques is to achieve higher and higher sales, thus, making it all the more important for company’s success. This also emphasizes the importance of communication techniques, so much, so that the researches show that a good product can miserably fail if not advertized properly. Therefore, it is important for the marketers to get acquainted about the development and functioning of the product and visions of the company in order to get it communicated across to the customer (Armstrong & Kotler, pp. 23-29, 2008). CCS is already focusing on personal selling; therefore, the section will focus primarily on non-personal tools. Non-personal media form an important constituent of the marketing sphere and comprise of communication channels that do not involve any personal interaction with the customer. The examples of non-personal channels of marketing include “major media, atmospheres, and events” (Capon, pp. 49-53, 2008). The major media comprises of different categories. One is print media, which includes “newspapers, magazines, etc” (Capon, pp. 49-53, 2008). Another one is broadcast media, which includes marketing through radio and television. The third type of major media is display media, which includes billboards, signs, etc (Kurtz & Snow, pp. 56-64, 2009). Atmosphere, on the other hand are artificially designed environments, which promote the product implicitly through different factors that reinforce the customer to buy the product. Events, another type of non-personal channel are staged performances that market the product to target audiences explicitly, for instance, exhibitions and press conferences (Kurtz & Snow, pp. 56-64, 2009). The non-personal communication forms a complex cycle of communication in which the information first flows from different media like television etc to the opinion leaders, which in turn, communicate the message to target audiences. A bridge between audience and media, the opinion leaders are the direct focus of marketing techniques. Public relations (Armstrong & Kotler, pp. 67-71, 2008) also play a crucial role in non-personal method of marketing. One reason for this may be the fact that they sound more believable than other resources. Many agencies underestimate its value by using it as a post-campaign material whereas if used efficiently, its can reach out to more people than other tools of marketing can. Public relations deal with building goodwill of the company by favorable publicity and avoiding the negative one (Armstrong & Kotler, pp. 67-71, 2008). Despite of its poor use in the past because of less awareness in the arena, many agencies are taking up public relations more seriously and investing more money and human resources to its use (Capon, pp. 46-62, 2008). In order to do so, public relations departments are prevailing across the industrial sector. The tools of public relations are employed by companies to evaluate public behaviors, interests, and ways to venture into campaigns that can gauge maximum public acceptance. This signifies how important public relations is in a sense that it plays an important role in marketing by adequately judging public attitudes, exploring new areas in which ventures might be fruitful and by correct execution of programs that can attract the right customers. Several resources can be used to enhance public relations. This may include “news, speeches, special seminars or gatherings, print material for instance brochures, newsletters, and annual reports” (Kurtz & Snow, pp. 67-79, 2009). With the advent of e-business, websites can prove to be another crucial and successful tool for spreading awareness about company and market its goodwill amongst other competitors and target audiences alike. From the abovementioned discussion, it is advisable for Peter and Sarah to go for the non-personal selling tool of public relations, as they are already confronting budget and advertisement will be an expensive option. On the other hand, public relations will enable CCS to take care of its existing, as well as potential stakeholders in a very interactive and easy manner. ORGANISING SALES FORCE Analysis of the case study has indicated an urgent need of sales team that will soon be a part of CCS. In this regard, this section will now discuss some of the different ways of organizing and managing a sales team that will be very beneficial for Peter and Sarah. The term, ‘sales force management’ (Simpkins, pp. 23-29, 2004) deals with the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the activities pertaining to sales force. The process is profound and complex and comprises of several steps. The first step is to design the structure and strategy of sales force. Once that is done, the next important step is to recruit the forces, which will carry out the task. Third, it is important to train the forces to carry out the task with maximum efficiency. Next, it is important to compensate the forces justly for their work and the next step in organizing sales force is to supervise them (McLeod, pp. 39-44, 2010). Lastly, it is imperative to evaluate the salespeople and rate them on their performance. A better analysis of sales force will be possible by looking into each of these steps and analyzing their efficiency. First, the most important step in managing sales force is to design the strategy and structure. There has been a lot of curiosity with respect to the ‘right’ way of structuring the sales force and strategizing in the most optimal way possible (Ingram & Avila, pp. 50-58, 2008). One of the most efficient ways of doing this is territorial sales force structure in which salespersons are assigned according to geographical locations and they are responsible to sell full line of products to all residents of that area. This way of structuring the sales force has proved to deliver many advantages. First, it defines the job of salesperson and their goals for a period. It is also easier this way to give credits and rewards to salespersons for accomplishing their takes in the given time limit. It also defines the territory salesperson is responsible for and therefore reduces the stress laid on the manager to keep a check of all areas (McLeod, pp. 61-66, 2010). This also produces a sense of competition amongst salespersons that get an incentive to create maximum local business in their assigned territories. In addition, this structure saves a huge cost of transport since a fixed area is designated to each individual. This structure is preferred at many managerial levels. Another important structure for managing sales force is the ‘product sales force structure’. In such a structure, the salespeople are categorized not according to territories but types of product they are supposed to sell. This might result into difficulties if a single customer shows interest in many products. On the other hand, salespeople have specialized knowledge for each product and more attention is given to individual products. Another structure often used by companies is ‘customer sales force structure’ (Simpkins, pp. 23-29, 2004). In this structure, instead of territory or products, customers define the categories of division amongst salespeople. In this form of customer-focused sales force, primary customers are distinguished and more attended to than others are. These are the basic three types of structures (Ingram & Avila, pp. 42-48, 2008). Other complex structures are combinations of these simple structures only and are adjusted according to companies’ requirements. Salespeople are the most important and costly asset of any company and need to be employed with great care and strategy. To do this, many companies use a workload approach, which emphasizes on the classification of salespeople according to the need of the day. Thus, there may be an outside sales force, which travels around visiting customers, and an inside sales force, which runs the business from inside office via telephones. Seeing the efficiency and timesaving character of the latter, many companies are now moving towards inside sales force and are introducing jobs like technical support, sales assistants, etc (Schwartz, pp. 38-47, 2006). So, gone are the days when a single salesperson had to deal with a large number of customers single-handedly. There has been a lot of division of labor introduced from the level of salespeople to that of executive decision-making and account managing. This complex structure requires a set standard of incentives and compensation to keep the workforce intact. Nevertheless, there might be a few problems for e.g. the selling teams can overwhelm customers; salespeople may find it difficult to survive in complex structures. In addition, it might be difficult to evaluate individuals in team efforts. The next important step is to recruit and select the right type of people for the job of salespersons. This is one of the most crucial steps since the selection of people determine the performance delivered and eventually the success of the structure. Although, there is no fixed formula for a perfect candidate for the salesperson’s job, however, traits like enthusiasm, persistence, initiative, self-confidence, and job commitment should be prioritized (Schwartz, pp. 38-47, 2006). To begin the process, it is vital to start by getting recommendations from employment agencies, current salespeople, placing advertisements for job vacancies in newspapers and getting in touch with fresh graduates. The selection process largely look at the sales aptitude, analytical and organizational skills, personality traits of individuals and other important attributes. A rather ignored part of managing sales force is their training. However, changing trends and modern techniques of learning have inspired managers to put fresh recruits to extensive training ranging from weeks to months. The training period lasts for four months which aims to help salespeople in getting acquainted with the company and its vision, with the manufacturing and functioning of products they are about to sell, with the strategies employed by their competitors and the customers, they are supposed to target, with effective presentation skills and with responsibilities and intricacies of field procedures. Finally, an important element of managing sales force is evaluation. An integral part of this process is feedback. There are plenty of ways to acquire honest feedback about the employees. Important thing to remember; however; is that feedback is just not criticism but is also supplanted with effective solutions to the problems and weaknesses along with the appreciation for the quality performance. In addition, benchmarking can also serve to be a good aid in evaluation but only in cases where performances are comparable. IMPORTANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS IN B2B Brief review of CCS’s case study has indicated emphasis on importance of relationships in business-to-business marketing. After analysis of CCS’s case study and available literature, one can state that in this period of economic recession, as well as in the future, CCS will be confronting the need of relationships and business networks to ensure their success in the market. It has been an observation that a variety of industries especially the service sector have always depended on the business networks and effectiveness of relationships to ensure success in their business processes. In particular, analysis (Morris, pp. 50-55, 2001) has indicated that nowadays, it has become very imperative for business organisations to ensure effective management of relationships with their customers, employees, and various other stakeholders, and business experts have been considering it as one of the most decisive issue that determines success or failure of an organisation. Moreover, besides other stakeholders, there is a consensus on the most crucial importance of customers that has resulted in efforts of organisations in caring for their existing relationships with their consumers and customers (Fill & Fill, pp. 48-63, 2004). In the past, organisations and business experts were focusing on profitable balance sheets; however, in the current scenario, things have changed and one can observe a shift from balance sheets towards creation of long-term networks and relationships. Experts are nowadays emphasising extensively on the greater importance of business relationships in comparison with bank accounts, lands, inventories, etc. While analysing relationship variables (Brennan & Canning, pp. 23-45, 2010), it has been an understanding that relationship age plays an important role in determining its extent of impact on the business performance. Specifically, it becomes the responsibility of business organisations to modify the products in accordance with requirements of the customers and extent of modification determines the age of relationship. In general, business organisations and customers both decide the nature and level of relationships mutually, most often informally, as well as, formally rarely. From the scrutiny of relationship variables, it is an observation that companies, as well as customers often consider relationships as a tool to expect everything from the other, whereas, avoiding self-responsibility that results in adverse outcomes and termination of the relationship (Wright, pp. 71-78, 2004). In this regard, it is very important to understand two-way nature of business relationships in which two stakeholders put efforts to create a strong bond with each other, in order to enhance the value of the process, subsequently, to achieve benefits mutually. In addition, while relying on business relationships and networks, it will be very imperative for Peter and Sarah to identify variables that will be in benefit of customers, and at the same time, put efforts to influence customers to recognise their relationship variables, such as trust, loyalty, etc (Hunter, pp. 36-40, 1997). Moreover, experts (Michel, pp. 63-69, 2003) have noted that while putting efforts for such different variables and exchanges of each other’s priorities, both parties end up building and maintaining long-term mutual business relationships, which then result in significant successful outcomes. Another misunderstanding identified during the analysis (Ellis, pp. 88-94, 2010) is more attention by organisations to successful relationships whereas ignorance to newer relationships that is completely inappropriate. Studies have indicated that relationships in their preliminary stages need more attention and a relationship getting greater emphasis in the beginning is more likely to provide better results in the future. In the result, although Peter and Sarah are enjoying a number of successful relationships, however, it will be essential for them to endeavor for newer relationships, in order to increase their customers’ loyalty in the future (Fill & Fill, pp. 66-75, 2004). From this understanding, CCS will have to work harder in order to retain existing relationships and build newer ones. Besides working harder, identification of functions of relationships is another important step that determines the extent of impact of relationship variables and business networks on organisational success and performance. To understand the functions, it is imperative to understand few particular characteristics of B2B relationships that are goal, value, and success. In detail, goal attribute indicates the enhanced level of innovation in the relationship; value refers to the enhanced growth in the revenue (Brennan & Canning, pp. 88-94, 2010), and thirdly, success relates to the level of communication between the partners in a relationship. Levels of all these three attributes decide the functional nature of a relationship as direct or indirect, and thus, Peter and Sarah will have to put efforts to carry out a review of their organisation, in order to create strategies accordingly. Another reason of huge importance of business networks for CCS is the global nature of business world, especially after the introduction of e-commerce that will allow Peter and Sarah to acquire different ideas, technologies, as well as new customers from the internet. Thus, business relationships and integrative business networks will play an important role in providing competitive advantage to CCS. From this perspective, business relationships and networks will be very effective for CCS, and thus, Peter and Sarah should be looking forward to build mutual long-term relationships with their customers, and subsequently, with their employees and other outsourcing partners. Relevant literature has indicated that organisations often limit relationships to their specific nature of relationships; however, experts (Morris, pp. 39-55, 2001) have noticed that relationships after successful cycles begin to go through the process of formalization. Unfortunately, most of the organisations unaware of such process break up their relationships in confusion. To summarize understanding of the extent to which relationship variables would likely be important for CCS, it is important to discuss multidimensional characteristics of B2B relationships. Specifically, time is the foremost dimension of B2B relationships, as it is very essential for relationships to remain active in order to exist. In this regard, time is the basic characteristics of a relationship that allows it to evolve over time. It is very important for organisations to give adequate time to customers and other stakeholders in a relationship to evolve and adjust, and thus, expectation of an immediate positive response will be inappropriate. In addition, few experts have categorized the time dimension into further stages of “pre-relationship, exploratory, developing, and stable” (Biemans, pp. 44-53, 2010). Besides time, relationships have structural characteristic. Literature has indicated that besides time, experts have been describing business relationships with the structures that are apparent for the outside world. In particular, experts (Biemans, pp. 50-66, 2010) have been using different terms to highlight the structural feature of relationships. Specifically, they are “continuity, complexity, symmetry, and informality” (Biemans, pp. 52-59, 2010). Another is the process dimension of relationships, which indicates the process of exchanges and coordination between two parties mutually in a relationship. It is an observation that cooperation and conflict both stay alive in every relationship, and thus, they exist in B2B relationships as well; however, the process dimension allows parties to cope up with both existences mutually through the process of social interaction. Another significant characteristic of relationships is their substance (Biemans, pp. 50-66, 2010). When two or more than two parties create a relationship, they go through a process, work for mutual benefits; however, in this process, this mutual understanding result in a special substance that enriches the level of satisfaction and effectiveness on both sides, and which enable the parties to continue their relationships with each other. Finally, the last characteristic is the value dimension of B2B relationships (Biemans, pp. 50-66, 2010). The creation of substance subsequently results in value building that enhances the level of relationships in the forms of personal, monetary, and strategic value. 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Fundamentals of Sales Management for the newly appointed Sales Manager. AMACOM. Simpkins, Robert A. (2004). The Secrets of Great Sales Management. AMACOM. Wright, Ray. (2004). Business-to-Business Marketing. Prentice Hall. Read More