The Basic Principles of Strategic Marketing and Sales Management

Sales Management & Strategic Marketing

LO 1: Understand the Basic Principles of Sales Management

What is sales management?

Sales management refers to creating selling strategies, recruiting and training the sales team, and organizing the activities that aim to achieve the company’s sales target. Sales management is critical in helping the business create a superior sales force, minimize costs, develop a robust relationship among the team members and the consumers, and achieve the sales target (Chunawalla, 2021).

Benefits of Sales Management

Every company must have effective sales management processes for its market success. It will help the company meet its sales target, increase sales performance, thrive in a very competitive environment, close sales faster, and regulate sales processes. Additionally, sales management plays a significant role in lead qualification optimization. Furthermore, through effective coordination, planning, and controls, the salespersons can guarantee quality selling processes, thus enabling the company to scale up. In addition, through effective sales management, companies can minimize products distribution costs and achiever greater profits. Such processes would help various business owners and companies to build good relationships with potential clients and customers, improve effective communication with the employees, and increase new products and production of goods that the clients highly demand.

Objectives of Effective Sales Management

Every company and business has to set various goals to be achieved with a specific period. Most businesses’ objectives are very similar, even though every business develops different plans based on their ways and theory. Most of the company’s sales management objectives are divided into both long and short terms. Short-term goals usually entail establishing sales volume to make the business profitable, capturing and retaining market share. On the other hand, long-term objective usually involves maintaining a given market share, availing technical advice to the sales team, collecting, analyzing, and tracking sales information, and training sales representatives (Chunawalla, 2021).

The roles of sales management

Sales management is not just about managing the sales. However, it also includes ensuring that the sales processes satisfy the customer’s needs. In a nutshell, it is providing that the sales team does excellent work, supervises the sales processes efficiency, and plans and sets sales goals.

Setting targets: When unrealistic targets are set, the company may suffer from negative influence. Therefore, for the business to make profits, there is a need for honest and correct targets that are achievable. The sales team reports can be used to determine the attainable targets. Nonetheless, it should also be known that earlier business performance may not necessarily gauge the current actions of the clients.

Quality leads identification. At any given moment, there might be many prospects making inquiries about the company’s products. Therefore, sales management should ensure that salespersons have a unique approach to every candidate and act quickly and correctly in closing the business deal. Also, the sales manager should ensure that the sales team can establish and convert quality leads (Chunawalla, 2021).

Improving sales processes efficiency. Establishing quality leads is one of the sales processes optimizations. Nevertheless, the sales management team should also improve the speed and efficiency of making sales. For instance, using a software solution with a unique service can enable the company to designate tasks to understand the various processes better. For example, when users inquire through the site, indicating an interest in a given product, it is prudent to refer them to sales representatives with profound knowledge of the items beginning from the essential information. Also, when emails campaigns are sent to the clients and leads, developing a good relationship and trust with such prospects begins.

Monitoring sales team performance. There is a need for salespeople performance tracking to establish their progress in their work and their value to the business. However, it is also recommended for the sales team to be motivated for any well-done jobs. While training may be critical for cases of underperformance to improve their skills.

Analyzing reports. The sales management team must always collect the necessary information to make a decision. For instance, the management should evaluate issues that hinder the company from attaining its goals. The administration can also consider various information received while establishing the objectives and assigning tasks to the sales team.

Basic principles of sales management

Sales managers work in line with the company targets. Therefore, to meet the goals, there are certain vital principles that the sales team has to comply with. They include;

Consistency: For the sales process to succeed, multiple factors come to play. However, the most critical factor is consistency. Although achieving consistency is hectic, it is worth effort and time. When the company upholds character, it can create good relationships with the clients, close deals rapidly, and increase sales. Therefore, the salespeople should be given precise and transparent information about every stage of the sales funnel, seek reports to evaluate their progress, and train them on how to conduct themselves with the customers.

A level of independence: No successful sales manager can do everything alone. Therefore, assigning some tasks to the team and doing them independently while the manager tracks the results is vital. Alternatively, the manager can allocate some tasks to the top performers and reward the closing deals. As a result, the team will feel trusted and motivated in their work, thus delivering good results.

Team Members’ Equality: It is critical to respect every team member and treat them equally. A good sales manager should not indicate a preference for some salespersons and place them above their colleagues. Instead of giving preferential treatment to some salespeople, the manager should adjust the anticipated standards and the sales target.

Conviction: It is not easy being a sales representative, and one of the most vital principles is conviction. Conviction refers to understanding the clients from what they say and coming up with a counterargument to prompt them to buy the product. Salespersons usually meet criticism, negative feedback, and counterarguments. Proper product knowledge will enable the salespeople to communicate with the clients on the product’s benefits, improve their confidence and customer retention, and handle objections.

Marketing and Sales Alignment

Within the company, sales and marketing are usually interdependent, and they rely on one another. Whenever these two departments are not working from the same page, none of them can achieve the primary target goal of attracting the business’s prospects and converting them to clients. To ensure the company’s marketing and sales are aligned, below are some steps currently in play to ensure growth and success (Patterson, 2007).

a) Establishing a single customer journey.

The company has developed robust sales and marketing strategies that circumvent the customer’s journey experience. The company does not entertain different customer experiences for inbound leads for marketing and inbound leads from sales outreach. Moreover, the company has ensured that starting from the awareness point of the customer’s journey, the path is kept consistent across the entire company. That is, both in the sales department and marketing department (Patterson, 2007).

b) Established customer persona

The company has given a lot of focus to the customer to sell the company’s products effectively. Both the sales and marketing departments have established customer persona, and they stick to it. As a result, it is easy to close the deals with clarity on who they are selling to. Furthermore, the company has clearly defined the customer profiles to avoid disagreement between the salespersons and the marketers on a client’s quality. For instance, while developing a customer profile, the marketers would contribute to interacting with their materials. In contrast, the sales team will contribute to converting clients and buying the materials.

c) Tracking the same KPIs for both the Marketing and sales department

The company has developed common ground for both marketing and sales departments to determine what has to be done for the relationship and alignment to be considered successful. Furthermore, the company has also established standard metrics for marketing and sales teams to minimize overlap. To ensure that the organization’s common goal is achieved, both the departments are tracked on the same KPIs. For example, the company’s sales and marketing departments have standard metrics such as customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, sales growth, and revenue. Also, with the company’s joint KPIs, marketing and sales departments measure success at all the stages of the sales funnel, enabling the company to optimize and re-evaluate whenever necessary (Patterson, 2007).

D) Collection of customers’ feedbacks.

The best mechanism that a company uses to evaluate the effects of its marketing and sales alignment is by obtaining the customers’ feedback. The company receives such input from the sales representatives on complaints presented by the customers and things that motivated them to buy the products (Patterson, 2007).

E) Provision of Marketing assets for all stages of sales

A critical function of marketing is to improve sales by attracting leads. However, the sales team would usually receive the customer’s concerns, questions, and even comments during the selling process. As a result, the sales team needs content to handle such objections, thus, the need for marketers again. Subsequently, the salespeople usually inform the marketing department on what customers need, and the marketing department would share with them how exactly to respond to the clients (Patterson, 2007).

LO 2: Critically develop a plan for organizing, staffing, and creating a salesforce

The organization’s sales structure

Every organization’s success depends on the structure of its sales force. For instance, it may be floundering when a salesperson used to make sales within a given region is reassigned to only concentrate within a specific industry nationwide. However, when an organization’s product requires special and technical knowledge, then it may be impractical to have a salesperson sell all the products. In such circumstances, it is prudent that each salesperson gets assigned to specific products.

Therefore, the organization’s sales structure is the sales team design. Companies may adopt different sales models, including industry or geographic territory approach, outside or inside a model of sales, Enterprise split/Mid-market, product model, or even the above combinations (Katsikea et al. 2011).

The Organization structure pre-pandemic

In our case, the pre-pandemic sales team’s organizational structure was geographical, where each sales rep was given priority to develop familiarity with their territory. This structure also enabled the sales team within a given region to establish a strong rapport with the residents and businesses and evaluate regional competitors’ weaknesses and strengths. The structure also enabled the company to assess sales person’s performance based on the market potential of each territorial boundary versus an individual rep’s performance.

In our case, the company had split its operation into three different main territories. However, the three main territories were again divided into regions. Each region was then assigned its executive members that guided the business’s operations within their respective jurisdictions. The executives had the flexibility to introduce policy change as deemed fit within their separate areas to enhance business performance, suit the local market’s specific needs, and increase sales (Katsikea et al., 2011).

Sales Manager

Territory 1 Manager Territory 2 Manager Territory 3 Manager

Territory 1 sales reps Territory 2 sales reps Territory 3 sales reps

Benefits of Geographical structure

The geographical structure enabled constant contact with the local clients enhancing immediate and prompt service delivery. Also, the company was able to tailor its approach to different regions based on clients’ tastes and preferences. Moreover, the company would receive an immediate market response; for instance, whenever there was a change of taste towards given products, the region leadership would either order more or fewer products based on the outcomes. Also, there were a lot of logistical efficiencies. Finally, the territorial divisions provided a conducive base for upcoming training managers as the company was able to identify top talents from each region and give them challenging tasks and promotions (Katsikea et al., 2011).

Demerits of the Geographical structure

One of the significant disadvantages of geographical structure is the duplication of resources that could cost the company to miss out on scale economies. Also, there would be a conflict of interest between the territorial leadership and the central management regarding some policies and protocols in some cases. Lastly, the company culture could easily be eroded because every region adopts different business cultures based on their environment and leadership.

Development programs are undertaken pre-pandemic

Part of the company’s development programs for the sales team includes training during hiring to equip the new unit with proper knowledge and skills as they begin their duties. Such exercises built their confidence and enhanced team capabilities. The company also launched career choice programs that gave the workers access to further educational training after one has served the company for at least two years. Those that were picked for such programs were given salary and tuition fees paid by the company.

Suggested changes to the structure and development of the sales team

With the covid-19 pandemic, there has been a disruption in businesses operation as people worldwide are adapting to new ways of life. Such Changes have consequently affected the way companies operate. Unfortunately, some businesses have been closed due to a lack of revenues and employees sent home jobless. To mitigate the pandemic effects, there is a need to change the company’s structural organization to minimize operational costs and adapt to a new way of life where physical contact is discouraged.

As a result, the proposed new of the company sales structure is the functional structure that organizes the businesses according to job functions; for instance, departments like finance, sales, marketing, human resource, logistics, information technology, etc. With such a functional team based on an individual area of work, the respective managements can easily organize their particular meetings virtually to limit cases of physical contact. Subsequently, operational costs can be significantly reduced due to the duplication of resources and roles at various regional offices (Katsikea et al., 2011).

On the other hand, with the pandemic, the company needs to offer development programs that will equip the sales team with proper skills to mitigate the challenges of the pandemic. Subsequently, the company should invest in upskilling the workforce members by availing access to technical skills learning. For instance, Allowing the employees to develop their capabilities in software engineering skills to equip them with the know-how of producing peaceful solutions to reach various prospects minus physical contacts. Moreover, there is also a need to introduce online self-paced learning coursework in areas like data analytics, computer science, and information technology to adopt the current market for technology in places of work (Katsikea et al., 2011).

LO 3: Evaluate sales and sales management strategies concerning current, legal, and ethical standards of practice.

Managing legal and ethical issues in sales and sales management

Companies need to create a value-based culture amongst their sales team by adequately managing the ethical and legal affairs that guide the sales team towards developing a good reputation and trust with the customers. Therefore, our company has developed a legal and moral code of conduct that shows our sales strategies to Have ethical selling. For instance, some of the companies selling plans that obey the legal and ethical standards include;

· Providing customers and suppliers with utmost honest information and feedback.

· Ensuring that the customer’s decision to buy is based on their preference.

· We encourage long-term relationships and loyalty between the company and its suppliers together with customers.

· The Company’s Market competition is simply by enhancing and building our brand, not damaging competitors’ brand names.

Furthermore, the company has developed its codes of conduct for legal and ethical selling and ensures that salespersons follow such behaviors strictly. Such codes of conduct help the company improve legal standards of practice, assist the sales team in making ethical decisions, minimize the risks of breaching fair trade policies, and illustrate undesirable and desirable selling conducts. Moreover, the company has established a code of conduct while selling, considering both the customer and the sales agent. Accordingly, the company has put the following sales strategies that observe ethical and legal standards (Ingram et al., 2007).

· The company has developed legal and ethical ways to identify and approach a client through the sales team.

· Established communication principles are guiding any form of engagement between the company’s staff members and the customers.

· The company standardly sets product pricing according to laws guiding the prices of such commodities to ensure that customers are not exploited through over-pricing of items.

· Developed mechanisms through which customers and the public can channel any form of complaints or conflicts, as well as the principles and policies that guide handling and resolving such complaints.

· Established policies that state the company’s commitment to disclose any proof of transactions by the customers or the company in case of queries.

· Created guidelines that enforce refunds, warranties, and repairs of any of the company’s products and ensure that customers are assured of such services where applicable.

· Established clear procedures for the public and customers to report any conduct breaches by the sales team or any other person acting on behalf of the company.

Common ethical and legal issues for sales and sales management strategies

In some instances, a salesperson may be having information about the buyer, for example, what frequency the buyer does purchase a given product. However, the salesperson does not have any legal right to share such information with any third party. As a result, our company established a non-discloser agreement usually signed during purchase to guarantee the buyer’s security and confidentiality. On the other hand, our company does not allow the customers to pick promotional items such as coffee cups or pens with the company’s logo. This is because we need every vendor in the market to freely access the opportunities to make sales and earn revenues based on merit, not freebies (Ingram et al., 2007).

However, our company also observes two fundamental principles: everyone should have an equal opportunity to earn business. At the same time, the customer is free to their choice on where to make the purchase. The company further considers manipulation as a form of unethical and illegal form of sales conduct that unfairly eliminates or minimizes the opportunity or ability of the buyer to make a choice. On the other hand, Persuasion may also influence the customer’s decision; however, whichever the decision, it remains the customer’s decision. The company also clarified the difference between Persuasion and manipulation, which is a misrepresentation of the product by claiming some product attributes that do not exist. It may also include withholding critical information through unfair sales tactics and hard sell tactics. As a result, most sales team members tend to be ethical while executing their duties (Ingram et al., 2007).

The company’s safeguards to ensure legal and ethical strategies on sales and sales management

Due to most companies’ incapacity to provide direct supervision to salespersons, sometimes they can get away with unethical behaviors if they fail to put proper safeguard measures. To curb such occurrences, our company has developed policies based on the company’s values and mission with an illustration of what is not acceptable and what is good. The ethics policies also detail how the employees should treat their colleagues, vendors, and customers. In addition, the company has adequately trained all the sales managers and sales agents on the policies—such pieces of training help to ensure that such policies are applied to the latter. Furthermore, according to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, when the employee involves in unethical behavior, the company will be protected from the consequences of a particular employee’s misconduct. Such employees will instead be held self-reliable for their actions.

Also, the company has established the mechanisms and procedures to enforce the policy. For example, the company has processes of reporting any illegal and unethical sales activities to maintain the confidentiality of the person making such reports. E.g., the company has installed an anonymous message box to enable customers, the public, and the employees to report any illegal or unethical conduct (Ingram et al., 2007).

LO 4: Critically evaluate the use of sales management tools such as sales forecasting, compensation methods, and sales reports.

New sales strategies to optimize the pandemic effect on market share

Successful businesses are resilient businesses irrespective of what the future has. As a result, our company has developed new business plans to cope up with the effects of the pandemic and remain in business. The following are some of the company’s business strategies that intend to optimize the impact of the pandemic.

Remote work plan: The pandemic has made it challenging to anticipate when the business will resume regular work plans. The company has therefore developed a work from home strategies to improve sales amidst the pandemic. To achieve this, the company set up online servers and network connections for all the sales team personnel to aid their work amidst the pandemic (Affandi et al. 2020).

Integrating offline and online sales: Due to the pandemic effect, the company experienced a significant reduction in revenues; however, other than running out of the storm and hoping vaccines will renormalize the economy, we shifted our focus and approach to making online sales. Subsequently, the company has developed various distribution networks that servers both the company’s offline and online networks. Furthermore, there is plan also to digitalize most of the company’s physical stores. The company also adopted social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, amongst others, to market and enabled clients to make orders from such platforms directly (Affandi et al. 2020).