Strategic Sales and Sales Management - Assignment Example

1. “You have recently been promoted from a sales representative to a Sales manager. Describe some of the difficulties that you may encounter in your new position”. A sales manager has greater responsibilities than a sales representative. Sales management requires leadership capabilities. Having no prior experience in management, the new post of a sales manager may present various hurdles that may affect performance but with time and training can be overcome. These challenges include; The current economic situation is very volatile. The global economic crisis which started in 2008 has presented numerous difficulties in the sales job. As a sales manager, am likely to face low business performance, decrease or stagnant demand as well as attack from media against business meetings. This is a challenge that requires integrity and, critical thinking as well as immense problem solving skills to overcome. The success of any organization depends on the effectiveness of the sales team. As a manager one is required to recruit, motivate and retain the best team for achieving the goals of the organization. This is challenging as it requires strategic management skills as well as leadership capabilities. This is a challenger for sales manager as they are burdened by the task to make rightful decisions in hiring and moulding their sales team into a perfect team to meet the targeted objectives (Guy 1993). This should be done with assistance of a HR manager in order to ensure successful recruitment process (Guy, 1993). Similarly, a sales manager is obligated to ensure that the organization’s goals of increasing sales and revenues are met. The competition is stiff, with increased competition in the major markets with global brands, which may present a new challenge in achieving these objectives (HSMAI’s Hotel Director of Sales & Marketing Advisory Board, 2012). In addition, a sales manager has more administrative duties than a sales representative. These new administrative duties and leadership may be a great challenge in a manager’s work. There is often very little time to meet the target and be able to coordinate the entire sales team for optimal sales and profits. Building awareness in an environment where competition for attention of customers is fierce is difficult. The sales manager must have the skills to create visibility, position and differentiate the company’s products hence avoid commoditization. This is a complex situation that brings challenges to a sales manager as he or she need to coordinate his team, motivate and reward hard workers appropriately and fire those sleeping on the job (Klymshyn, 2006). Creating effective reward scheme, which balances the individual need of a salesperson while achieving efficiency and effectiveness is the most significant challenge faced by sales managers (Cravens, Meunier-FitzHugh, and Piercy, 2011). Sales management requires budgeting, sales efforts as well as marketing spend. Providing the return on investment for this initiatives and being in a position to articulate one’s ideas and result is always a challenge to sales managers (HSMAI’s Hotel Director of Sales & Marketing Advisory Board, 2012). Having no prior experience in management can make this situation even more difficult. Training, workshops and seminars can help overcome such difficulties in running the marketing department to the success of the company and the individual sales team members. Sales managers also need to establish stronger internal relations with other departments in the company including the marketing department, revenue management, finance, distribution, customer relations management as well as the human resource departments in order to succeed in achieving the department’s objectives (HSMAI’s Hotel Director of Sales & Marketing Advisory Board, 2012). These responsibilities are not easy for a new sales manager as he have to familiarize and relate with each and every department. Finally, a sales manager may encounter difficulties in balancing between online technology and field work. Sales representatives are also remote and semi remote which also poses a great challenge to a novel sales manager (McCord, 2011). This can lead to undesirable results if not well managed such as loss of customers, revenues and lack of market for the products all together. 2. “Discuss the importance of recruitment and selection of sales people. Explain the possible problems that you may encounter in selecting the wrong person for the job”. The process of recruiting and selection of sales persons is a complex and time consuming venture. Nevertheless, it is very important to invest the necessary resources to employ the right sales talent (Havaldar, 2007). The firm’s long term success depends on recruiting and hiring the best qualified for the work. Even though sales performance is influenced by other several factors, the right people for the job, makes all the difference. Recruiting and hiring process ensure that sales manager (with assistance from other stakeholders/departments though the sales managers have the final say in selecting his/her team) only have the best people for the job which will drive the sales team to optimal levels and achieve the organizational goal. Hiring the best ensures that, customers not only get high quality merchandize but also their service needs are met. Satisfaction results from all of the client’s dealings with the firm are achieved as well as sales follow is well executed to determine whether a customer is likely to be a repeat customer or not (Boone and David, 2012). Follow up can be done through email reminders, calls which are meant to reinforce the client’s initial decision to purchase the company’s products. In addition, it helps in establishing mistakes that help improve the next sale. This helps strengthen the link that the sales person has been working hard to build between the company and the customer (Boone and David, 2012). Hence, recruitment and selection is a critical process for sales managers to ensure successful business. In addition, it is important to carry out recruitment and selection so as to be able to conform to the rules, regulations and policies put in place by the relevant authorities such as minority and gender recruitment (Still and Norman, 1976). The consequences of hiring the wrong people for the job can be very detrimental to the organization. Hiring the wrong people can lead to poor sales coverage as well as poor customer follow up (Ingram, LaForge and Avila, 2012). This may lead the company to lose a great deal in customer retention, thus reduced sales. Consequently, to overcome deficiencies, the firm may spend large amounts of resources in training the “wrong” sales people (Ingram, LaForge and Avila, 2012). It may take the firm valuable time, personnel and finances to train such people and eventually reap nothing. Hiring the wrong people for the job will mean that, the sales manager need to do more supervisory work (Ingram, LaForge and Avila, 2012). The sales manager will need to keep track of almost every transaction in order to ensure that customer retention is achieved and that his team is able to survive in the highly competitive market. Unfortunately, the company may not be able to survive in the fierce competition if its sales people are not aggressive and competent for the job, which will lead the company to lose the market, spend unnecessarily on such sales people and thus suffer losses. Having a poor sales team may make it difficult for the company in establishing enduring relationship with clients. This means that, the likelihood of customers ordering their next order from a rival company is higher when dealing with unqualified sales people (Ingram, LaForge and Avila, 2012). In addition, poor recruitment and selection may lead to increased turnover. This may be very damaging to the company (Ingram, LaForge and Avila, 2012). 3. “Why is personal selling so important in a time when technology is seemingly replacing people?” Personal selling is arguably the most useful part of the communication mix despite the growing use of internet technology in sales and marketing. The efficiency of any communication element depends on establishing a match between the required information and the information provided (McDonald, 2011). To achieve this match, the marketer must be conversant with the various needs of different people at various stages of the selling process. This model ensures that the firm’s communications reach all principle points in the buying process. Personal selling still remains significant and so important amid increased technology use. In personal selling, the sales person and the customer are able to meet face to face allowing the client to have a look at the product and ask questions regarding the product or the service. This allows the sales person to get real reaction of the customer regarding the merchandize (McDonalds, 2011). This cannot be achieved in other communication mix approaches such as the use of social websites. Sales messages in a personal selling instance can be made more flexible and can be tailored to fit the requirements of the individual customer. This can help greatly in adjusting the product or the service, which will help the company meet the customers’ individual needs, hence satisfaction (McDonalds, 2011). It is therefore likely to have repeat and re-repeat customers when employing personal selling techniques in marketing and sales. The sales person is able to apply in depth knowledge of the product to communicate their message to the observed needs of each individual client and is hence able to deal with any objections or suggestions as they arise (McDonalds, 2011). In cases where the service or the product can be modified to the needs of the customer, a conversation can help establish how best to achieve this (Johansson, 2009; McDonalds, 2011). This cannot be attained through use of internet or any other form of technology. Ultimately, sales persons through personal selling can make an order and possibly negotiate on delivery, price, requirement or special delivery (Anderson and Dubinsky, 2004). This cannot be achieved through technological communication. The idea of personal selling is fundamental in sales as well as in marketing as compared to technological communication through the internet technologies such as Skype, Facebook, websites or YouTube. This is mainly due to the fact that, one cannot establish a relationship with a person without meeting them. There has to be a physical meeting between the client and the sales person in order to enhance or establish communication over the internet. This is among the most significant role of personal selling. For the company to remain connected to the real world, personal selling is the only way. Customers feel more committed to a product or service, if they can relate and connect with sales people directly (Lamb, 2008). Thus personal selling remains undisputable in communication mix. References Anderson, Rolph and Dubinsky, Allan. Personal selling: achieving customer satisfaction and loyalty. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Boone, Louis. and David L Kurtz. Contemporary Marketing 2013. New York: South-Western Pub, 2012. Callender, Guy. Australian sales management. South Melbourne: Macmillan Education Australia, 1993. Cravens, W. David, Meunier-FitzHugh, L. Kenneth, and Piercy F. Nigel. The Oxford handbook of strategic sales and sales management. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Havaldar, Krishna. Sales and distribution management: Text and cases. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 2007. HSMAI’s Hotel Director of Sales & Marketing Advisory Board, Overcoming the Top 10 Challenges Facing Sales & Marketing Professionals, 2012. Accessed [18/05/2012] http://www.hsmai.org/files/Article_Overcoming_the_Top_10_Challenges_FINAL.pdf Ingram, Thomas, LaForge, Raymond and Avila, Ramon. Sales management: Analysis and decision making. New York: M E Sharpe Inc, 2012. Johansson, Johny. Global marketing: foreign entry, local marketing, & global management. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2009. Lamb, Charles. Marketing. Mason, OH: Thomson/South-Western, 2008. McCord, Paul. 3 Major Issues Facing Sales Management in 2011, PharmSource, 2011. Accessed [18/05/2012] http://www.pharmsource.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/PharmSource_McCord-Sales-Article_3-Major-Issues_01-2011.pdf McDonald, Malcolm. Marketing plans: how to prepare them, how to use them. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K: Wiley, 2011. Still, Richard and Norman Govoni. Sales management: decisions, policies, and cases. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1976. Read More