Sales Management
Managing the sales effort
Sales management: Activities of planning, organizing, staffing, motivating compensating, and evaluating and controlling a sales force to ensure its effectiveness
Boundary-spanning role: role performed by a sales manager in linking the sales force to other elements of the organization’s internal and external environments
How Salespeople and Sales Managers Spend Their Time
One of the sales manager’s greatest challenges
Careful selection is important for two reasons:– Substantial costs involved
– Mistakes are costly and detrimental to customer relations and sales-force performance
Compensation Evaluation and Control
Evaluation and Control
Recruitment and Selection
Training
Organization
Supervision Motivation
Making the sales effort
Principal methods used are on-the-job training, individual instruction, in-house classes, and external seminars
Popular training techniques include instructional videotapes, lectures, roll-playing exercises, slides, films, and interactive computer programs
Compensation Evaluation and Control
Evaluation and Control
Recruitment and Selection
Training
Organization
Supervision Motivation
Managing the sales effort
General organizational alignment may be based on geography, products, types of customers, or some combination of these factors
National accounts organization: organizational arrangement that assigns sales teams to a firm’s largest accounts
Compensation Evaluation and Control
Evaluation and Control
Recruitment and Selection
Training
Organization
Supervision Motivation
Managing the sales effort
Basic Approaches to Organizing the Sales Force
Span of control: the number of sales representatives who report to the first level of sales management
Optimal span of control is affected by such factors as complexity work activities being performed, ability of the individual sales manager, degree of interdependence among individual salespersons, and the extent of training each salesperson receives
Compensation Evaluation and Control
Evaluation and Control
Recruitment and Selection
Training
Organization
Supervision Motivation
Managing the sales effort
Efforts to motivate salespeople usually take the form of the briefings, information sharing, and both psychological and financial encouragement
Compensation Evaluation and Control
Evaluation and Control
Recruitment and Selection
Training
Organization
Supervision Motivation
Managing the sales effort
Psychological encouragement includes appeals to emotional needs, recognition, and peer acceptance
Financial encouragement includes monetary rewards and fringe benefits such as club memberships and sales contest awards
Compensation Evaluation and Control
Evaluation and Control
Recruitment and Selection
Training
Organization
Supervision Motivation
Managing the sales effort
Commission: incentive compensation directly related to the sales or profits achieved by a salesperson
Salary: fixed compensation payments made periodically to an employee
Compensation Evaluation and Control
Evaluation and Control
Recruitment and Selection
Training
Organization
Supervision Motivation
Managing the sales effort
Annual Pay for Sales Representatives and Sales Managers
Sales: level of expected sales for territory, product, customer, or salesperson against which actual results are compared
Other measures such as customer satisfaction, profit contribution, share of product-category sales, and customer retention are increasingly being used
Compensation Evaluation and Control
Evaluation and Control
Recruitment and Selection
Training
Organization
Supervision Motivation
Managing the sales effort
Another way to categorize a salesperson’s strong points:– Task, or technical ability– Process, or sequence of work flow– Goal, or in results (output) of sales
performance
Compensation Evaluation and Control
Evaluation and Control
Recruitment and Selection
Training
Organization
Supervision Motivation
Managing the sales effort
Ethical issues in sales Promotional activities, including personal
sales, raise many ethical questions Sales managers create and ethical sales
environment by:– Promoting ethical awareness
– Making sure that all employees
know that the firm opposes unethical conduct
– Establishing control systems to monitor ethical conduct
Ethical Dilemmas
Ethical breaches that occur between salespeople and their employers include:– Improper use of company assets and cheating– Sexual harassment– Using bribes to secure a sale
Customer demand for cash kickbacks represents another ethical dilemma
Strategic Implications
– Today’s sales force is strength and through technology
– However, nothing can replace the power of personal selling in generating sales and building strong, loyal customer relationships
Managing the sales effort
Sales force management
Environmental pressures leading to changes sales management include:
More sophisticated buyers Customer and supplier data linked via computerized data
warehousing systems New technology and making alternative distribution methods
possible Automatic inventory reorder processes reducing the need for
personal selling Accelerated product life cycles Reduced customer loyalty in some markets
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