Essential functions
Following are the key functions to be performed by the company’s sales manager:
Link to Consumers
The sales manager shall be the link between the company and its customers. The managers shall therefore be responsible in communication customer complains or any other information to the Marketing Vice President. Key duties will involve selling company products to the target market. Being the link between the company and its customers, the sales manager shall be responsible in communicating important messages to different departments; this shall make it easy for the manager to work together, and thus enable the company to reach its goals, mission and values.
Recruiting Sales Staff
This task will involves searching for well qualified sales staff to represent the company in different markets. The manager will also allocate duties to the newly hired sales tem together with the existing sales representatives. As the overall sales team leader, the sales manager shall be responsible in motivating, monitoring and supervising representatives’ performance both at the field and in the offices.
Setting Target and Budgets
The manager shall be responsible in setting budgets to be used in distributing company products to the markets, as well as setting targets for projected sales revenue in different markets. It shall be important to ensure that these goals are met.
Understand the Market
The sales manager shall be the source of information regarding competitors’ moves in the market, which will be important for the company because it shall be able to stay ahead of the competition after understanding rivals’ market expansion plans (Bunn & Johnson 15).
Primary Objectives
First, Sales manager’s key objective shall be to promote the company and its products to the market in the most aggressive and beneficial manners. Means used will be the ones that will be affordable to the company; they must also help in maintaining the value of company products among consumers.
Second, The sales manager shall ensure that goods reach customers’ locations at the right time and in the form they had left company stores. This shall ensure that quality is always guaranteed, and thus prevent inconveniencing company consumes.
Third, the manager shall pursue with zeal consumers loyalty to company products. This is a must achieve goal, because it will lead to more repeated business for this company. The manager should always have it in mid that most of the company’s revenue is garnered from repeated business, which should remain the case.
Fourth, the sales manager shall be liable for maintaining smooth routes of communication between the company and its customers. The manager should thus inform or train the sales team on ways of keeping consumers happy and collecting information that will e of great use for the company. The sales team should understand very well their employer’s mission, goals and vision, which should be used in guaranteeing consumers the best services products possible.
Fifth, sales manager shall be monitoring inventory so as to ensure that there are always enough products to be shipped to consumers’ locations when needed.
Education
Sales manager has to be knowledgeable in the following areas:
Sales and Marketing
Apart from holding a bachelors or higher degree in business administration, the manager must have undertaken a sales and marketing course ruing undergraduate or graduate education. A post graduate diploma in sales and marketing will serve a due advantage to the manager.
Language Skills
This involves the knowledge of understanding the both written and spoken English. Being able to write and speak the language to a degree that can be understood by consumers is also necessary because it will make performing the duties of listening and attending to consumers’ needs.
Company Products
Having an educational background that touches on company products will make it easier for the sales manager to learn on new company products easily (Danna 194). This will benefit consumers because their questions regarding new company products, which will be explained by an individual who understands not just the product but its chemistry and history.
Customer Service
Being in contacts with our customers at all times will demand the sales manager to have knowledge of consumer relations. This could originate from advertising and public relations from business classes, and will come handy as the sales manager’s executes various customer duties.
Management
Being the tam leader of the company’s sales team will require the sales manager to be well exposed to the art of management. The sales team will be the company’s link to its company and should thus be managed well so as to leave the lasting positive impression on consumers regarding our company’s caring culture. Apart from management, the sales manager will be required to have some mathematical skills that will be needed in preparing target sales and budget allocations to various sales teams.
Experience
It shall be important for sales manager to exemplify the following experience:
- Attentive to detail: This involves the ability to listen carefully to consumers in ways that will create greater understanding. This will also help in listening and understanding instructions from superiors.
- Expressive: This means that the sales manager has to be in a position to express in detail product features to consumers, which will the passage of accurate information to consumers.
- Outgoing: The sales manager shall have to be experienced in mixing with group of individuals and strike quick conversations. This is because the company sales manager will be meeting new customers that have to be interacted with as if the two parties have known each other for decades.
- Negotiation oriented: This involves having the experience to make decisions in a group of people, or in situations that no side holds sway. Since the company does not have cardinal rules to be followed by the sales team, it shall be upon the sales manager to lead sales tem in negotiating contacts with customers or their middlemen.
- Persuasive: In reaching constructive agreements in negotiations, the sales manager has to exemplify the nature of convincing the other party into reaching mutually beneficial conclusions.
Work Environment
The sales manager will be performing tasks in different sets of environment, one being the office where alls strategies will be developed and the other being on the field while interacting with the customers. The following are some of the scenarios that the sales manager will be faced with along the line of duty:
- Interacting with Senior Management; This involves regular meetings with the company’s senior management to brief on how company products are doing in the market compared to those of competing firms.
- Interacting and influencing consumers; this shall be different form the one in the office. The office environment is meant to be perfectly formal and is with collogues and superiors that the sales manager knows well. However, the sales manager will be faced with a different environment in the field, because it shall involve strangers whose needs have to be met while at the same time improving their perception on the company.
Both environments have one thing in common: they provide sales manager with opportunities to crate and maintain relationship with two groups that form key stakeholders in the company. The sales manager should use that opportunity to understand what both sides want to achieve in the long run existence of the company (Hisrich & Jackson, 8). The information gathered should be used in formulating policies that will ensure that goals of both sides are harmonized and achieved. Meeting with these groups will hasten the managers understanding on the direction that sales strategies should take.
Conclusion
The sales manager job analysis detailed above highlights all the necessary requirements that a successful sales manager job applicant should hold. All the responsibilities that sales managers are tasked with are also well detailed. It has also been indicated on what successful sales manager should target at achieving in specific periods of company operations. Though not mentioned above, it is very important for sales managers to have a passion for their job, company products as well as interacting with consumers. Performing this sort of job analysis for various positions in the company is a sure way of ensuring that each individual understand what is expected of them even before they start working in a certain company (Sims152).
Works Cited
Bunn, Albert H. & Johnson, Eugen M. Managing the Sales Force. New York: General Learning, 1973.
Danna, Anthony, J. Developing Professional Selling Skills and Techniques. St Victoria, British Columbia: Trafford, 2005.
Hisrich, Robert, D. & Jackson, Ralph. Selling and Sales Management. Hauppauge, Barron’s Educational, 1993.
Sims, Ronald. Contemporary Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities of Human Resource Management: Charlotte, NC: IAP, 2006.