Difficulties Faced by Sales Manager - Essay Example

DIFFICULTIES FACED BY SALES MANAGER Being a manager has great responsibilities. It is the basic responsibility of the manager to manage people. Sales manager is the person who posses both internal and external pressure. Internal pressure is referred as the pressure from the company and external pressure is the pressure from the customers. The journey from sales executive to sales managers offers many areas of learning about the sales tactics and how to make and close the sales. The sales manager has the responsibility to manage the sales team of the company and to make sure that the sales team is able to complete their tasks on time. Sales job is task oriented and this job needs a strong evaluation with the passage of time. The sales manager needs to conduct evaluation of all the sales employees individually1. It is very important for the sales manager to supervise all the plans him/her self because sales executives require continuous training and development in their job. The responsibilities of a sales manager increase as he reaches the position of manager. Sales executive is an easier job than the sales manager. The main reason why the sales executive is an easier job is that in such a position the person is responsible only for his/her tasks and goals, but when the executive becomes a manager then he/she is responsible for the overall team. There are different problems that the sales manager has to face. The first problem that is faced at by the sales manager is the missing of objectives or to not clearly identify the objectives to be achieved. This problem is commonly faced by many sales mangers at the initial time of their career as a manager. The company is highly dependent on its sales objectives because the revenue of the company is associated with its sales objectives. Another problem that is very annoying for the sales manager is when the company is not giving the attractive offers to the clients or customers. In such a case the sales manager is required to make effective sales strategy to overcome this issue. Sales mangers consider this problem as one of the most difficult problems. One more issue that is difficult for the mangers at its initial level is the lack of customer identification and the lack of research for finding right prospects for the products or services. This is the fault of marketing professionals of the company for not clearly defining the target market to the sales professionals. This issue is being faced by the mangers that have the responsibility to manage the team of sales personnel. Sales executives or personnel in many companies are using the strategy of cold calling. In marketers view cold calling is the wastage of time and money. The company needs to identify the targeted segment first and then make a call to approach them. Another common issue that is faced by the sales manager is the inefficient sales executives in the team. Inefficient sales executives especially in the area of customer relationship management cause a loss of customers. It is very difficult to train the employees to maintain a good and long term relationship with customer 2. Customer relationship in concentrated competitive markets serves as a competitive advantage to the company. It is very important to analyze the consumer behavior while dealing with customers. Sales manager face difficulties while training the sales staff for analyzing the consumer behavior at the time of sales as well. In order to be an effective sales manager, the manager must need to know these issues and then take steps to mitigate these issues. PERSONAL SELLING SO IMPORTANT IN A TIME WHEN TECHNOLOGY IS SEEMINGLY REPLACING PEOPLE From the very beginning the concept of personal selling has came upfront when there was no other medium for marketing a product. There are many advantages that have been discussed and highlighted by many marketers and authors for the promotional activity of personal selling 3. But now it is the era of using technology and technology is replacing many things. One of the main reasons for employing the technology is the conversion of hard work into smart work and to reduce the working hours and efforts. Nowadays almost every company is utilizing the technology in all functions of their businesses. Online marketing and selling, advertising on different mediums, and sales promotion are able to attract the customers more then personal selling. Currently online marketing and selling seems very much influential in approaching the customers. In the consideration of all the other mediums of marketing and sales, personal selling is still the most differentiated in all. Some factors that differentiate the personal selling from all the other mediums of promotion include: 1- MINIMUM WASTAGE OF RESOURCES Wastage refers to the additional time and cost of approaching the prospects. The target market is very clear for personal selling and the sales personal meet directly with the customers. Specified groups are targeted for personal selling so it saves a lot of time and cost of approaching the customers. 2- CONTINUOUS AND IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK Continuous and immediate feedback is the most beneficial tool of the personal selling. It has great importance since it had come into practice. Personal selling allows the company to get the immediate feedback of the customer. Face to face meeting with customers allows the sales personal to get knowledge about his/her taste, preferences and ideas or the knowledge regarding his/her overall perception about the product and the company. Time to time meeting with customers allows the sales personnel to get continuous feedback from the customers regarding the products or services. This activity helps to identify the problems with the products or services. Sales personnel also ask the customers to give suggestions regarding the improvement in products and services. 3- EFFECTIVE ADVERTISEMENT The sales personnel advertise the company’s products or services very effectively because they serve as an advertisement for their company while encountering with customers. The face to face interaction with customers is more effective than any kind of advertisement whether it is online or lies in a category of some other medium. The sales personnel can effectively convince the customers in meeting personally. The product description can be appropriately presented to the customers by meeting with him/her in a personal meeting. 4- EDUCATES CUSTOMERS Once the relationship is developed with the customers then it would become easy for the sales personals to market the other products of the company conveniently. It is very useful to approach dissonance buyers because sales employees have the opportunity to educate the customers about its new products and services of the company while meeting for the evaluation of the sold product. Strong customer relationship is the most important benefit that is achieved by personal selling. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF BUILDING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS BY THE INTERNET Building customer relationship by the internet is an emerging concept and now it is followed by most of the companies in the world. It has a great number of advantages by which businesses are making high profits by spending low cost. Nowadays, the internet users have increased with a fast pace and the online market is growing with consistency as well. Digital marketing is the way to market the products and services in the logical market 4. From all the tools of digital marketing social media marketing is considered as the most effective medium in engaging customers with the company. At present Facebook is the most viable example of the customer engagement on the internet. Involving customers in different activities is a very effective medium to build relationship with customers. Talking about the company’s product and services with customer by comments on Facebook and blogs on website are effective strategies to engage the customer for a long time with the company’s logical construction. There are some specific advantages and disadvantages that have been mentioned to realize the importance of building customer relationship on internet. ADVANTAGES Internet facilitates the company by giving it cheap ways of marketing and building customer relationships. The most common way for building long term relationship with customers on internet is email. Regular emails engage the customers with the company for a long time till the customers unsubscribe the email notifications of the company. Email is used by businesses especially for the existing customers. Emails are mostly sent for the promotion of new products and offers or about the innovations in the existing products and for any notification that the company would like to inform to the customers5. Another big advantage of retaining customers through internet is that the company can easily track the customer record. An advertiser or company can track its customers or prospects by web bugs, bounce messages, click through rate, etc. With the help of this data the company is also able to identify the regular users or irregular users of the websites, blogs and Facebook page, etc. The regular customers are easy to approach after knowing about his/her consistency. DISADVANTAGES Some businesses use Email marketing for creating awareness of products and services among the prospects but they did not explore their target market and send Emails to maximum number of people. This activity creates a negative impression of Email marketing. Customer’s perception becomes negative for Email marketing because of the bulk Spam Emails of different products. It is difficult to observe and analyze the exact behavior of consumer while interacting with him/her on internet. Immediate response seems difficult in communicating with prospects or customers on internet. The most considerable attribute that is absent in internet marketing is the call for action because it only happens when customer gets encounter with the product or service6. Bibliography Dubinsky, Alan J., Steven J. Skinner, and Tommy E. Whittler. "Evaluating sales personnel: An attribution theory perspective." The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management (1989): 9-21. Grewal, Dhruv, Michael Levy, and Greg W. Marshall. "Personal selling in retail settings: How does the internet and related technologies enable and limit successful selling?." Journal of Marketing Management 18, no. 3-4 (2002): 301-316. McWilliam, Gil. "Building stronger brands through online communities."Sloan management review 41, no. 3 (2012). Siau, Keng, and Zixing Shen. "Building customer trust in mobile commerce." Communications of the ACM 46, no. 4 (2003): 91-94. Tam, Jackie LM, and Y. H. Wong. "Interactive selling: a dynamic framework for services." Journal of Services Marketing 15, no. 5 (2001): 379-396. Weitz, Barton A., and Kevin D. Bradford. "Personal selling and sales management: a relationship marketing perspective." Journal of the academy of Marketing Science 27, no. 2 (1999): 241-254. Read More