Selling and Sales Management

Abstract

In most organizations, the main marketing resource is the salesforce. This resource is qualitatively different than almost all other marketing activities because of its dependence on relationships between individuals. The role of the salesforce mainly covers prospecting, selling, and supporting.

The building block of a sales organization is the territory, which may be defined by geography, by industry, and by product. Territory plans should, at least in theory, take into account annual costs (including direct and indirect expenses/overheads, which may be high, as well as salary and commission) and annual calls available, which may be as low as 200 per year.

The overall sales personnel plan may, however, be derived in a number of ways:

• Resources needed to exploit the potential—equivalent to objective and task

• Resources needed to meet target—usually based on affordability or percentage of revenue

• Negotiated levels—a major selling task for the sales manager

• Business as usual

The whole of the selling operation revolves around the individual sales professional, whose role holds many similarities to management in general:

• Territory management

• Resource management

• Management of support personnel

• Management of the customer interface

The last aspect, the customer interface, may represent the major investment of the organization, although it may be unrecognized.

The territory sales plan will include:

• Identification of customer and prospect sets—A, B, and losers

• Sales objectives—including product and/or market mix

• Sales forecasts—totals, with bankers, probables, and possibles

• Call and activity targets—for example, mailings

Prospecting (generating new customers) is a numbers game: The more mailings sent out, the more prospects, and ultimately customers, will be generated. On the other hand, much of the work of sales professionals revolves around industrial sales. This type of sales employs long-term sales campaigns to multiple personnel in an organization. Accordingly, relationship marketing and account planning are important activities—and with them project management skills.

Sales team management is a specialized form of human resource management, but it differs in terms of recruitment, motivation, control, and training. Motivation is usually linked to compensation (commission), although other factors, such as leadership, may be the main requirement for a sales manager. Sales managers should also be aware that because sales activities are local activities, they tend to be strongly affected by cultural differences (e.g., shopping habit, negotiation style) around the world, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the international marketing manager to integrate overseas sales operations. The development of an effective sales organization requires salesforce objectives and salesforce strategy adapted to local differences and calls for careful recruiting, training, supervising, motivating, and compensating of local salespeople.

Two major forces are reshaping sales management. First, a recent trend toward downsizing and restructuring across corporate America, and increasingly around the world, has put mounting pressure on sales personnel to perform more effectively. Second, the computer revolution has ushered in an officeless working environment for many sales professionals with the aid of laptop computers, modems, and fax machines. Although these tools allow sales professionals to allocate more time to traveling and visiting their clients and new prospects, managing them effectively has become increasingly an important issue.