Sales Force Management the Use

Sales Force Management

The use of scanner data collected at the time of checkout in supermarket has increased dramatically in sales analysis. One company has recruited families nationwide to participate in a panel study. When a shopper enters the checkout lane, he or she gives the clerk a plastic card that is passed over the scanner. All items purchased that are scanned are recorded in the shopper's diary. Oscar Mayer, a Wisconsin-based producer of meat, turkey, and seafood, has used different advertising campaigns in several markets. Oscar Mayer analyzes scanner data to determine which ad campaign was most effective. How else could Oscar Mayer and other manufacturers use scanner data? Of what value would scanner data be to sales people for a company such as Oscar Mayer? To food retailers? What are other industries that could benefit from the same type of data?

The use of Point-of-Sale (POS) data analysis by Oscar Meyer is just one example of the literally hundreds of companies that are beginning to take advantage of the advances in the areas POS data capture, POS data analysis, data mining based on large sets of data, and the rising interest in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) as product tracking and traceability standard. RFID is also revolutionizing supply chains as well

Today both bar coded and RFID-tagged products are begin scanned at check-out, and the product sales are being analyzed for potential insights into what makes consumers buy a specific product, at a specific price point, from a specific type of store, and if a promotional offer made any difference in the purchase. Oscar Meyer and other manufacturers then can more succinctly and accurately measure the impact of their strategies on the marketing mix of any specific product, or an entire product series as well. For Oscar-Meyer and other companies, the ability to track cause-and-effect of their marketing strategies, across the areas of product, price, promotion, and distribution strategies is critical for understanding how best to move into new markets as well. An additional use of the scanner data is to complete data mining to see the long-term adoption rates of one product relative to another, and when analyzing in conjunction with pricing data, the elasticity of demand for a specific product, or for an entire series of products. Knowing the elasticity of demand for a given product or series of products by geographic area is a major competitive advantage; as pricing strategies can then be defined that take advantage of the relative elasticity of demand in different regional markets.

Scanner data would be incredibly valuable both the Oscar Meyer salespeople in addition to food retailers in that it would first and foremost show the most popular-selling products and the prices paid. Next, this data could be used to define the optimal mix of Oscar Meyer products for each store, and this would be of great value to both the salesperson and the food retailer. Knowing the optimal mix of products would significantly increase inventory turns in the store, netting out increased profits for the food retailer, and higher sales for the Oscar Meyer salesperson. Further, the impact of couponing, price promotions, and the use bundling, advertising at both the local and national level, and the ramp-up of new products and their impact on existing products could all be ascertained by the analysis of scanner data.

Additional industries that are benefiting from POS scanning include apparel, durable goods, and toys. POS data collection through scanning is now being completed on both bar coded as well as RFID-based products in Wal-Mart SuperCenters across the U.S. Every evening the data is uploaded via satellite link to Bentonville, Arkansas, which is the headquarters of Wal-Mart, where sales analysts feed the data into analytics applications and start looking for the impact of pricing on demand; in short they are looking to find price elasticity in the product lines. This technique of POS data capture and then uploading for analysis at corporate for analysis is credited with giving Wal-Mart a significant advantage in holiday sales of toys against Toys-R-Us, in addition to the successful launch of its apparel product line featuring Jaclyn Smith. Retailers globally are finding that POS data can be used for completing sales forecasts of new products as well, and measuring the causality of their marketing strategies to a level of precision not possible before.

Q2. A sales representative for the High Speed Technologies is faced with a demand from an important customer that is in direct conflict with company policies. The customer wants several product modifications with no change in price. What can the sales rep do to handle this conflict?

The sales representative needs to explain that additional product modifications are going to be disproportionately expensive to complete, and that in order for High Speed Technologies to complete the work, an additional charge is required. In addition, the sales representative also needs to be very clear that despite the customer being a very valued one, High Speed Technologies incurs exceptionally high costs on completing product modifications, and that the extra charges are in fact priced at a very fair level. Finally the sales representative needs to state that the modifications will not be done unless the customer is willing to pay the extra costs, and that the customer will find that if they shop around to find other companies to do the customized work, it will be even more expensive. So paying the charges may actually save them costs in the long-run, yet the modifications cannot be provided for no charge.

Q3 Women are playing an increasingly role in selling both as salespeople and as sales managers. What are the challenges facing women and other minorities as they become involved in a sales career?

It's often been said that women have to work twice as hard as men, especially in the sales profession, just to stay where they are. Minorities also fight the prejudice that women at times receive, especially in industries that are accustomed to Caucasian, white male sales representatives. There is the common challenge of overcoming stereotypes and bigotry as well. For monitories, the added challenge of overcoming racism as well. Despite these many challenges however, women and minorities tend to excel in sales and sales management, as both thrive on measurable results and the competition against other sales reps, both in their company and at competitors' companies. Sales tends to attract those women and minorities that have exceptional communication skills and the ability to persuade others to see the value of doing business with them. In fact many companies and entire industries have seen women and minorities rise to the top of the selling profession based purely on the drive these two groups of professionals have after receiving initial rejection due to the factors mentioned before. While there are societal barriers to women and minorities excelling at business, sales as a profession tends to attract only the most competitive of people, and this includes those women and minorities who like to pursue and win new business.

Q4 in a recent discussion on the use of the Internet to generate applications, the following quote was made and illustrates the application of computers and internet to the recruiting and selection process: "It doesn't care whom you know, what kind of suit you are wearing, or whether you have a firm handshake. Salespeople looking for a job may soon have to face their toughest interview yet- with computer."