Managing the marketing channels

It is very important to secure and maintain harmonious working relationships with the distributive networks are an important as building and maintaining favourable relations with final buyers. Distributive outlets are customers for the products, and collectively they bear responsibility for making the pay-off sales to final buyers. Unless the supply of product flows through the final buyers, marketing channels clog, and all previous personnel selling and other marketing efforts are wasted.

Both the manufactures and distributive outlets have much to gain from co-operation, and much to loose if it is lacking. Although co-operation is a two way street, generally the manufacturer must initiate it. Those charged with planning, administration, and implementation of programs of co-operation with distributive outlets must consider the implications for personal selling strategy and sales department operations.

No manufacturers marketing program is complete if it lacks plan for securing and maintaining the co-operation of the distributive outlets. The fortunes of manufacturers rise and fall with those of their distributors and dealers. If distributors and dealers succeed in selling the products, the manufacturer also succeeds if they fail the manufacturer fails.

Training and development

In every area training is the prerequisite to improvement, like-wise the purpose pf sales training is to achieve improved job performance, and the training should rest on the convictions that every salesman can be improved through carefully designed training

Steps involved in designing sales training:

1. Defining training aims.
2. Determining the training needs.
3. Determining the special needs.
4. Deciding nature and type of training required: Normally following are the some types of training, In company training, external training, individual training, group training, on-the job training, off-the job training.
5. Deciding the content.
6. Choosing the methods: The lecture, the personal conference, demonstrations, role playing, case discussions etc.
7. Developing the material required for training.
8. Evaluating the effectiveness of the training.

Aims of Sales training: Normally the sales training will have following aims to inculcate new techniques or to improve upon the existing knowledge.

1. To increase sales.
2. To acquire new accounts.
3. Faster turn round stocks.
4. Selling a complete product line instead of just fast selling items.
5. Better merchandising and sales promotion.
6. Better technical knowledge.
7. Improving sales presentation and sharpening sales skills.
8. Improving customer relations and dealer relations.

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Sales Approaches

Symptoms of poor morale:
1. Minor complaints get magnified.
2. Unionism suddenly arises.
3. Anti-management attitude of sales personnel.

Sales coaching/supervision: It is also important factor in sales management. It is perhaps the most neglected, but potentially most rewarding area. Effective sales supervision will increase sales and profits and reduce selling expense. It will also improve the morale and motivation of the salesman and reduce their wasteful turnover. The extent and sales supervision may vary depending the complexity of the organization. Important aspect that requires close supervision includes.

1. Setting norms for sales calls.
2. Managing key customers.
3. Guiding salesman on route planning.

Evaluation/appraisal: The basic idea of all performance appraisals is the belief that human beings have great capacity for growth and improved performance under right climate for performance, they will respond creatively and positively. The same principle applies equally to the performance appraisal of sales personal. The sales personnel perform better when performance criteria, goals, and tasks are established clearly and by mutual agreement. Likewise their performance is considerably improved when they are given periodic feedback on how they are performing and in what areas they can improve by greater application. The sales personnnel performance helps debt consolidation work in company. They also come up with improved performance when they are given the necessary help and guidance on the job and are rewarded promptly according to their contribution.

Motivation of sales personnel

Motivation sales personnel is an important aspect of sales force management sales force management sales personnel require additional motivation because of inherent nature of the sales job, role conflicts, the natural tendency towards apathy, and difficulties in building group identity. The concept of need gratification and interdependence assist in understanding efforts require that sales personnel. Implementing motivational efforts require that sales executives be skilled leaders, rather than drivers, of sales personnel. It demands that they be skilled in interpersonal and written communications. Satisfactory job performance develop out of deep understanding of motivational forces and process, effective leadership, two-way communication, and effective handling of relationships.

Moral building: Motivation in the larger sense includes morale good morale leads to good motivation and to good performance. In other words, morale and motivation go to hand in hand, it is the responsibility of sales management to built up the morale of the sales force and maintain it at high level. Following are the some of the reasons for poor morale.
1. Improper designing of the sales territories.
2. Some salesman might be given territories with little potential.
3. The compensation plan may be faulty.
4. Performance evaluation not done with fairness and objectivity.
5. Unfair treatment in rewards, transfer and promotions.

Compensation plan types

Types of compensation plans:

A. Straight salary plan:
This is the simplest compensation plan under this plan sales person receive fixed sums at regular intervals, representing total payments for their services. This method has advantages as well as disadvantages it should be carefully chosen according to the type of product industry.

B. Straight-commission plan:
This plan mainly relies on the theory that the sales personnel should be paid according to productivity. The assumption underlying this plan is that sales volume is the best productivity measure and can therefore be used as the sole measure.

C. Combinations of salary and incentive plan: Most sales compensation plans are combinations of salary and commission plans. It includes fixed salary plus incentive according to the performance of the individual sales person.

Apart from the above methods some companies may have the system of paying bonus and fringe benefits, Bonus differ from combinations – Infact a bonus is a amount paid for accomplishing a specific sales task a commission varies in amount with sales volume or other commission base. Fringe benefits, which do not bear direct relationship to job performance, it is normally percent of the total sales performance package, out of which some are required by legal and government such as provided fund, gratuity, etc.

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Sales Potential - Sales Force Management

We are talking here Sales Force Management, as part of SFA we are going to talk today Sales Potential.

This method is based on the assumption that performance of the set of activities contained in the job description represents one sales personne unit. A particular sales person may represent eithe more or less than one sales personal unit.

If the individual's performance is excellent, that individual may do the job of more than one unit, if the individual performance is below par, he or she may do less. If management expects all company sales personnel to perform as specified in the job description, then the number of salespersons required equals the number of units of sales personnel required.



Generally it is observed sales descriptions are constructed on management's assumption that they describ what the average sales person with average performance with accomplish.


ref: SFA Software

Workload Method - Sales Force

Sales Force Management we are talking here. In my last talk we talk about Structuring Sales Force. Before that We talked Sales Force Automation, Sales Policies Formulation, Product Polices, Distribution Policies and Pricing Policies.

Today we continue our talk on Sales Force Management and we talk about deciding the size of the Sales Force Team. There are 3 basic approaches used in approximating sales force size.

• Workload Method
• Sales Potential Method
• Incremental Method

We talk here Workload Method.
According to this method the basic assumption is that all sales personnel should shoulder equal workloads. Management estimates the total workload involved in covering entire companies market and divides by the workload that an individual sales person should be able to handle, thus determining total number of sales people required. The companies applying this approach generally assume that the interactions of three major factors – customer size, sales volume potential and travel load – then determine the workload involved in covering the entire market.

ref: Sales Force Automation & Lead Organizer Software

Sales Force Size - Sales Force Management Software

Sales Force Management we are talking here. In my last talk we talk about Structuring Sales Force. Before that We talked Sales Force Automation, Sales Policies Formulation, Product Polices, Distribution Policies and Pricing Policies.

Today we continue our talk on Sales Force Management and we talk about Deciding the size of the Sales Force Team.

Deciding the size of the Sales Force:-
Under this activity management need to determine how many number of sales man required meeting sales volume and profit objectives. If a company has too few sales persons, opportunity for sales and profits go unexploited, and if it has too many, excessive expenditure for personal selling reduce net profit. It is difficult perhaps impossible to determine exact number of salespersons that a particular company should have. Three basic approaches are used in approximating the sales force size they are:

• Workload Method
  
• Sales Potential Method
  
• Incremental Method

ref: Sales Force Management & Leadorganizer Software

Structuring Sales Force - Sales Force Automation (SFA)

Sales Force Management we are talking here. We talked Sales Force Automation, Sales Policies Formulation, Product Polices, Distribution Policies and Pricing Policies.Today we are going to talk about Structuring Sales Force.

Organizations usually structure their sales force on a territory basis or on a product/product line basis. In the case of territory based structuring, the same salesman handles all the products or product lines of the firm in given territory, which will be compact.

In the case of product based structuring, several salesman of the firm operate in a given territory, each handling different products of firm. Here the sales territories will be relatively larger.

Sometimes the sales force is also structured based on customer type or customer class, in yet other case sales force is structured on a complex basis, involves a combination of the types mentioned above.


ref: sales force Automation software

Sales Force Management

Introduction:
Sales Force Management is a sub-system of marketing management. It is Sales Management that translates the marketing plan into marketing performance. That is why sales force management is sometimes described as the muscle behind the marketing management. Actually sales force management does much more than serving as the muscle behind marketing management. Sales managers in modern organization are required to be customer-oriented and profit-directed and perform several tasks besides setting and achieving personal selling goals of the firm. In this article let us understand briefly the sales force management, tasks involved in the sales force management.

Definition:
Sales Force Management originally referred exclusively to the direction of the Sales Force. Sales force management meant of all marketing activities including advertising, sales promotion, marketing research, physical distribution, pricing and product merchandising.

To be Continue……..