Sales and Marketing Management

Sales and Strategy
1 What strategy decisions are needed in the personal selling area? Why should the marketing manager make these strategy decisions?
The strategy decisions needed in the personal selling area (a) how to motivate, (b) how to maintain order and structure, (c) how to incorporate sales technology support into the process, (d) how to select and train the right sales team, and (e) how to ensure fair and appropriate compensation for all. The marketing manager must make these strategy decisions because as the head of marketing, he oversees the process of moving products. The sales team has to be organized in such a way that product movement is maximized. Likewise, the use of resources has to be efficiently and effectively applied. As the different customer types will vary, the implementation of sales technology support may vary as well from sales person to sales person depending upon the type of clientele the team members are tasked with selling to. In some cases, tech support is more likely to be impactful than in others, and allocating the right resources to the right sales persons can help to ensure that a cost effective approach is taken.
Personal selling requires teams to meet face-to-face with clients and developed personalized sales pitches that speak directly to the clients. Generic sales pitches are not effective—the client wants to know how the company’s products and services will affect him personally, not buyers in general (Jerpi, 2018). That means the sales team has to know the client’s needs in advance. By knowing everything there is to know about the client, the sales person can be better enabled to motivate the client to buy and thereby close the sale. The sales person can also know whether tech support would be of interest to the client: some clients appreciate this approach, but not all do. It is the sales person’s job to know ahead of time how best to prepare for each pitch. As Robertson (2006) notes, a failure to conduct the pre-meeting research will ultimately lead to a failure to close the sale.
The marketing manager must make strategy decisions in the same way a film director makes decisions when shooting on set. Various options will be available—whether to shoot with maximum light or minimum, whether to use a filter or not, whether to reshoot a scene or leave it as is, whether a script change is required or whether a casting decision has to be rethought. The marketing manager faces similar questions. Every sales person will have scripts to be memorized but they will also have to know how to respond on the fly and improvise when necessary. That is why managers have to select and train the right staff. Poor sales people can result in lost sales, lost clients, lost contracts and poor movement of product. Attracting talent is a strategy marketing managers have to be very conscious of—and part of that strategy is to entice and incentivize with good compensation packages. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivators help move people in the right direction (Gerhart & Fang, 2015).
Training plays a part in developing a strategy as well, and the onboarding process can be especially helpful in making sure that new hirers have all the support they need. The onboarding process can be comprised of including mentors to help the new hire learn the ropes and answer questions. It can also include bringing the new hire into the fold more effectively so that he or she feels part of the team and knows exactly what is expected (Hamburg & Harris-Thompson, 2017). Onboarding can be one of the most effective strategies that a marketing manager can utilize to ensure that the new hire is trained effectively and that turnover rates are reduced.
Onboarding also facilitates the maintenance of order and structure within the team, which then filters out to the sale. The more ordered and structured the sales team is, the more ordered and structured the pitch is going to be. A personal sales pitch that has no order will appear sloppy and confused to the client, who will suspect that the sales person has no idea what he is talking about. A client wants professionalism and knowledge—he does not want to feel like his time is being wasted by a sales person who is not prepared. The more prepared and professional the sales person is, the more likely a sale is to be closed. Thus, the marketing manager has to be concerned about maintaining order and structure within his own team—and that means using strategies like onboarding.
It also means that the marketing manager has to be mindful of establishing a strong workplace culture. Culture can impact motivation and work ethic more than any other factor in the workplace (Raz & Fadlon, 2006). If the manager cannot maintain a healthy and positive workplace culture, no strategy on earth is likely to save the company because in the end, sales thrive on supportive management policies and effecting a strategic workplace culture is one of the best ways to support a sales team. A company like Keller Williams, for instance, thrives by creating a positive and supportive workplace culture in which all agents facilitate one another’s development by assisting in mentoring and training, and answering any and all questions. The company attracts new talent by fostering a reputation of putting family first.
The marketing manager has to think about all of these strategies as part of one big strategy to promote sales because they all line up together like dominos or link up like tracks in a train track system. One strategy connects to another—but unless they are all in place, the train will not run all the way to its destination. For this reason, the marketing manager has to be completely mindful of how strategies work together to create a holistic approach to personal selling.
2 Discuss the role of the manufacturing agent in a marketing manager’s promotion plans. What kind of salesperson is a manufacturing agent? What type of compensation plan is used for a manufacturing agent?
The manufacturing agent in a marketing manager’s promotion plans plays a substantial role in a marketing manager’s promotion plans. The manufacturing agent is typically a self-employed individual who represents manufacturers and works for commissions. The manufacturing agent will pitch the company’s products to retailers or directly to customers.
The marketing manager’s promotion plans will have to take into consideration the manufacturing agent’s ability to canvas a particular population or to target a particular demographic over a given period of time. For that reason, the promotional plan should be conceived around the ability of the manufacturing agent to get in front of businesses or consumers, depending on the producer’s target market, making pitches and closing sales. If a team of agents are on the beat, the marketing manager can develop a larger promotion plan, but if the number of agents is relatively low, the promotion plan may be more narrowed, focused and implemented over a longer duration.
At the same time, marketing promotion plans can be personalized with direct marketing being used by manufacturing agents who use the marketing manager’s promotion to pitch sales to specific types of clients. One particular group may be targeted by the manufacture, and the agent will have to research this group, understand its needs and how the manufacturer’s product can satisfy those needs, train in making the sale and closing the sale, and then go out and make the sale. The marketing manager has to oversee this process as it ties in completely with what he is doing on the back end of the sales strategy.
The manufacturing agent is a self-employed salesperson or a sales representative who presents himself on behalf of a company—for instance, a company selling copy machines. The agent will go from one business to another, like a door to door sales person, making pitches and explaining why the business should buy a copier from the company the sales rep is representing. The manufacturing agent is important in a marketing manager’s promotion plans because he is out there on the front lines, working the doors and phones, chasing down leads, prospecting for clients and making the actual pitches. Without the manufacturing agent, the marketing manager’s promotion plans are not going to be worth much at all, because it is the sales rep who takes the promotion out into the streets and delivers it in face-to-face meetings with the customers and clients who need to be incentivized to make the purchase. The manufacturing agent is like the hook, reel, and rod all in one while the promotion plan is merely the bait. The bait is useless at catching fish if there is no actual hook—and the manufacturing agent is the hook and rod that reels them in.
The type of compensation plan used for a manufacturing agent is typically commission-based, though some firms will also provide a salary for an initial entry period or for the duration of the employment. Thus, some firms will have a combination salary-commission-based compensation package. The most common compensation package, however, is the simple commission-based package. This means that the manufacturing agent receives a percentage of every sale that he makes. If he is selling copiers, he will receive an agreed upon percentage of the total sale price. If he is selling homes, the same rule will apply.
As Higuera (2018) notes, compensation tends to be based on the manufacturing agent’s experience level, the type of product or sale being made, and whether or not the agents is receiving a salary plus commission or is only commission-based. Thus, for a new manufacturing agent, the compensation plan may consist of a starting salary in order to support the agent while he gets his training and begins to make sales; for a manufacturing agent with 10+ years of experience, there may be no salary but a higher commission plan because the experienced sales agent can command it up front based on his experience level and ability to close sales immediately upon starting. For a highly experienced manufacturing agent of 20+ years with a stellar track record, a manufacturer may have to pay a high commission plan plus an ongoing salary simply to attract the agent in the first place. The more in-demand a manufacturing agent is, the more companies will have to come up with a satisfactory plan that will attract the agent into wanting to represent their firm. This would be an example of extrinsic motivation that Gerhart and Fang (2015) discuss when it comes to motivating people to work for a company. Unless an agent feels like he will be compensated more at one firm over another there is no incentive for him to leave his current sales position in order to learn to sell a new product for a different company. That is why the more experienced and effective a manufacturing agent is, the more he can command a higher compensation package for himself.
3 Describe a consultative selling sales presentation that you experienced recently. How could it have been improved by fuller use of the AIDA framework?
A consultative selling sales presentation that I experienced recently was when a real estate agent came to our house to make a pitch on why we should have him represent us as our sales agent to sell our house on the market. The sales agent was professional and had printed off some sheets with information and graphs. He gave some explanation of how he would market the house and what he would do to drum up interest in the home by placing it on Zillow and numerous other online sites.
However, the agent never really gave us any indication as to what he would do that would make him sell our house better than any other agent. Our house was in a nice neighborhood and other neighbors had sold their homes at a good price and our family was interested in doing the same. We had plans for other agents to come make their pitches to us, so we were not in a hurry to just go with the first agent who walked in the door. We wanted a good sales agent who could get the job done and get us a good price on our home. Essentially, the agent was selling himself to us—the problem was he was not really making himself stand out. His pitch was entirely generic. It was like he was delivering a standard script to us. We could have been anyone in any house. Our house has a lot of character and lot of neat things that make it really different—but you only notice them if you pay attention and look. This agent did not even seem interested in what the house was that he would be selling. He just wanted us to sign his contract as though he were the only agent on the market.
The consultative selling sales presentation could have been a lot fuller had the agent made use of the AIDA framework. As Hanlon (2013) notes, the AIDA framework consists of four main steps: (1) raising awareness, (2) developing interest, (3) creating desire, and (4) taking action. For a real estate agent giving a consultative selling sales presentation, there is a lot that could be done to make his presentation better, and the AIDA framework can help to plan presentations.
Starting with the first step, raising awareness, the agent should have begun his presentation with an explanation of who he was and why his brand mattered. He was an agent with a particularly well known company and we were interested in him and his company because we had heard about them from others. But he failed to adequately leverage his brand identity. He went into the presentation as though he expected us to already be aware of his merits and reputation and the quality of the brand he represented—but we were not that knowledgeable. He assumed far too much and thus we never really became affiliated with the service that was unique to the brand that he was part of.
The second step, developing interest, could have been accomplished by helping to generate interest within us with regard to his services. This would have compelled us to ask more questions to better get to know him and what his past experiences were—but our agent failed to create any interest in us whatsoever. His presentation was bland and boring and just consisted of charts and figures that we could have printed off ourselves after doing a quick search on the Internet. We were not looking for that sort of thing from him; we were looking to see what he offered as a human being, and he wholly failed to spark any interest in us to do business with him.
Third, he failed to create any desire in us. He did not utilize his brand personality to move us from liking his brand to wanting it as our representative. He did not fill us with any desire whatsoever other than for his presentation to end so that we could get someone with a little more personality to pitch to us. In sales, we felt that if our agent had no connection with people and could not spark any interest in us, it would be unlikely that he would spark any interest in a potential buyer. He should have created more of an emotional connection with us, by asking us questions about our background, the home, the neighborhood and by simply taking an interest in the place and in us. By showing us that he cared about who we were and where we came from and all the neat little things about our house, he would have created a desire within us to have him as our sales representative.
Fourth, he failed to move us to take action. He still could have saved the presentation by inviting us to get to know his company more and to see all the good things his brand was capable of doing—but he failed even here. Instead of simply showing us the data and telling us what he would cost in terms of commission, he should have pointed us in a direction where we could become active learners and engage with some of the information ourselves once he left. This is what taking action is all about according to the AIDA model. Yet he failed to help us reach this point. Instead, he simply handed us all the information we would need so as though there was nothing more for us to know.
Had the agent followed the AIDA model the presentation would have been a lot better structured and fuller. The interest and desire would have been created in us to do business with him and the information that we required about why his brand is important would have been communicated to us. That is what we really wanted to know from the start—but he failed to help us take an interest in him just as he failed to really take an interest in us or in our home. Interest has to be shown by the seller to the buyer first before the buyer can really show much interest in return.
References
Gerhart, B., & Fang, M. (2015). Pay, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation,
performance, and creativity in the workplace: Revisiting long-held beliefs. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 2, 489-521
Hamburg, J., & Harris-Thompson, D. (2017). Get on board with performance solutions 
that perform. Training, (4), 33.
Hanlon, A. (2013). The AIDA model. Retrieved from
https://www.smartinsights.com/traffic-building-strategy/offer-and-message-development/aida-model/
Higuera, V. (2018). The average compensation percentage for sales reps. Retrieved
from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/average-compensation-percentage-sales-reps-38188.html
Jerpi, L. (2018). Marketing strategies for personal selling. Retrieved from
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/marketing-strategies-personal-selling-46563.html
Raz, A. E., & Fadlon, J. (2006). Managerial culture, workplace culture and situated
curricula in organizational learning. Organization Studies, 27(2), 165-182.
Robertson, K. (2006). Top 7 sales blunders. Retrieved from
https://top7business.com/?Top-7-Sales-Blunders&id=1473