Business Decision-Making - SONA Company - Assignment Example

Business Dесisiоn Making xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Name xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Course xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Lecturer xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Date The products and services not achieving the sales goals: How to boost sales for SONA Company Task 1 I need this data so that I can be able to devise a plan for improving and boosting sales. There are various issues and things that I need to know concerning sales in this company. What method does this company use in sales? I need to know the marketing strategy that this company uses to market its products (Ko & Dennis, 2004). Both secondary and primary data will help me in developing strategies for solving this problem. The existing data is not sufficient for making decision and therefore more data and information is necessary (Heschong et al., 2002). Primary and Secondary Data Collection Plan Tasks Sources Steps to Accomplish Schedule Pre/post observations of sales process Internal and external sales data Identify observation tool Train data collection team Get collection schedules Conduct observations Convert observation to data sheets Enter data, compile and analyze March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 Review of the available sales records Disaggregated test results sales records Identify tests, sales levels to monitor Request 3-year history of relevant sales Enter data Determine method to monitor sales (groups or individuals, time frame) Collect records Enter data for baseline All these activities will take place on September 2014 Management interviews The senior management and the sales and marketing department personnel Determine the personnel to be interviewed Send letter to selected personnel with consent form Developing interview protocol Training interviewers Scheduling interviews Conducting interviews Converting notes to data entry forms Entering data October 2014 October 2014 October 2014 October 2014 October 2014 November 2014 November 2014 December 2014 Distribution of questionnaires to the employees Formulation o questionnaires Formulating questionnaires Developing questionnaires protocol Distributing the questionnaires to the employees Collection of the questionnaires Examination and evaluation of the questionnaires Conversion of the data in to entry forms Data entry November 2014 November 2014 November 2014 December 2014 December 2014 December 2014 December 2014 Data entry and analysis All internal and external materials gathered Formulation of solution to the problem December 2014 The survey methodology used in this work is statistical survey. A disproportionate stratified sample constructed using an optimal sampling allocation technique was used for the survey. A list of interview exchanges within the target area were sorted based on both the top management and lower management. This was necessary because of the techniques used in collecting data. This also improved the accuracy of the responses during the survey. The sampling framed used in this work is stratified sampling. The reason behind use of this is that it provided additional information about the business problem. Questionnaire for the products not achieving the sales targets What methods do you use to market sales? Where do you make more sales? What methods do you use in making sales? Task 2 SONA Sales Performance For The Past 11 Years   Year SONA sales sales target Industry Average   2003 $ 9,647 $ 11,948 $ 39,788   2004 $ 9,982 $ 12,674 $ 44,282   2005 $ 10,674 $ 13,685 $ 49,205   2006 $ 10,874 $ 13,987 $ 55,908   2007 $ 11,023 $ 14,000 $ 57,420   2008 $ 11,745 $ 14,500 $ 61,101   2009 $ 11,908 $ 14,300 $ 75,359   2010 $ 10,484 $ 14,000 $ 90,359   2011 $ 11,647 $ 15,000 $ 97,413   2012 $ 11,346 $ 15,500 $ 109,422   2013 $ 12,757 $ 16,000 $ 110,599 Total   $ 122,087 $ 155,594 $ 790,856           Mean   11,098.82 14,144.91 71,896.00 Maximum   $ 12,757 $ 16,000 $ 110,599 Minimum   $ 9,647 $ 11,948 $ 39,788 variance   815,331.76 1,342,738.89 680,015,579.80 Covariance   741,210.69 1,220,671.72 618,195,981.64 STD   902.96 1,158.77 26,077.11 Percentile   12757 16000 110599 Quartile   10579 13836 52556.5 In the past eleven years from 2003 to 2013, SONA Company has not achieved any of the sales targets it had set. This indicates a course for concern for the management and the sales and marketing department. It is a clear indication that the marketing techniques and methods used by the company are not effective and they do not bear much to the consumers. This is also evidenced by the company performance against the industry average. SONA sales are far much below the industry average. There is therefore a need for an overhaul of the whole sales and marketing departments. Marketing department and sales departments are much related. The effectiveness of marketing determines the amount of sales the company will make. For this company, the marketing department has not been doing effective marketing thereby making the sales to be below the industry average and even fail to achieve the target. One of the ways of increasing sales of the company is to use direct marketing and to create awareness of the company products in the market. Its competitors have outperformed SONA Company in the market. It is therefore necessary for the marketing department to draw ways of having and carrying out effective marketing of not only the company products but also the company as well. Consumers in the market have no identification with the company products. Consumer identification is an area that this company will focus to improve and have an impact. It will focus to create product loyalty among the consumers. According to the information of the data summary of the representative values in the table above, the company does not achieve its sales target. Its sales performance is also below the industry average. This is a concern for the company and it should be addressed appropriately. The measures of dispersion used in this scenario to inform the sales performance are the standard deviation, the covariance and variance. The standard deviation above measures the data dispersion using the mean. The standards deviation is higher because the data is spread apart more. It is indicating the volatility of the sales. The company has relied on the sales and does not make investments to boost the revenues and therefore the sales are very volatile. The company stocks are very volatile because they spend a lot of time in storage facilities. This is also because the conversion of stocks to sales is very low as indicated in the representative values. Both the variance and the standard deviation are statistically important difference between the representative values. The confidence level of the sales people in this company is very low. In the same case, the effectiveness of conversion is weak meaning that it takes long before stocks are converted to sales. Quartiles, percentiles and correlation coefficient are used to draw useful conclusions in business context. The percentiles are used in a variety of ways. One of these ways is breaking of a big set o data in to understandable and digestible chunks. Sometimes it is not possible to draw conclusions from large sets of data, percentiles helps in breaking them down so that conclusions can be made (Gomez et al., 2004). Percentiles also serve as the basis for comparison of business situations such that it indicates the situations that have done better. In this case, the percentile indicates which representative values are favourable. The higher the percentile the better the results or the data is. A Percentile indicates how many of a given data set falls within a certain percentage range. They help make conclusions on which set of data is favourable according to the business situation under consideration. A quartile divides a set of data in to four parts. As such, a quartile is the fourth item in a data set. Task 3 Report One of the ways of increasing sales of the company is to use direct marketing and to create awareness of the company products in the market. Its competitors have outperformed SONA Company in the market (Sharma et al., 2000). It is therefore necessary for the marketing department to draw ways of having and carrying out effective marketing of not only the company products but also the company as well. Consumers in the market have no identification with the company products (Ahearne et al., 004). Consumer identification is an area that this company will focus to improve and have an impact. It will focus to create product loyalty among the consumers. According to the information of the data summary of the representative values in the table above, the company does not achieve its sales target. It is very important for the company to focus on increasing sales. The focus should be based on achievable and realistic targets. Although the company has not been achieving the targets, it is not that the targets are too high or unachievable. In fact, the targets have been very low as compared to the industry performance. The reason behind the failure to achieve the sales targets has been ineffectiveness of the company sales and marketing department. Institutionalization of the department is therefore needed as well as setting of realistic and achievable sales targets. It is very important for every staff in the company to understand that it is the responsibility of every employee to harness and increase sales and not only the sales or marketing department. References Ahearne, M., Weinstein, L., Weinstein, L., & Srinivasan, N. 2004. Effect of technology on sales performance: Progressing from technology acceptance to technology usage and consequence. Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 24(4), 297-310. Gomez, M. I., McLaughlin, E. W., & Wittink, D. R. 2004. Customer satisfaction and retail sales performance: an empirical investigation. Journal of Retailing, 80(4), 265-278. Heschong, L., Wright, R. L., & Okura, S. 2002. Daylighting impacts on retail sales performance. Journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society, 31(2), 21-25. Ko, D. G., & Dennis, A. R. 2004. Sales force automation and sales performance: do experience and expertise matter?. Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 24(4), 311-322. Sharma, A., Levy, M., & Kumar, A. 2000. Knowledge structures and retail sales performance: an empirical examination. Journal of Retailing, 76(1), 53-69. Read More