Sales Planning
A sale planning is the key component of any sales activities. Sales plan consists of two major components: the sales strategy and the sales tactics (Everett 47). The sales strategy refers to the acts of letting the community know about the company and its products. The sales tactics may refer to activities, such as putting adverts on local dailies, knocking door to door, setting up events at the work place and attending seminars and chamber of commerce meetings (Everett 49).
Prior to making sales plan, managers should consider the sales quota, the product line, the sales territory and the line of products and services. However, revising the sales from time to time is also very important. This applies to the best plans developed by sales group.
Sales managers often make mistakes not preparing sales plan or developing sales plan, which are practically impossible to execute. They leave out important requirements during sales plan development.
This includes sales rep development, where managers develop sales plan for the actual sales people without involving them. Secondly, sales plan should have provision for regular reporting, may be on weekly basis to provide flexibility in the planning cycle. Finally, sales metrics should focus on results and activities (Zahorsky 2011).
Sale force motivation involves making the sales people feel accepted and their efforts recognized as a crucial part of the company’s development. There are three major determinants of motivation. This includes environmental conditions, the firm’s management policies, such as compensation, supervision and task and personal characteristics of the sales person (Zahorsky 2011).
Positive motivators include recognition, acceptance, respect, trust, achievement, and pride while the negative motivators include intimidation, fear, revenge, obligation and social comparison (Everett 51).
One of the biggest blunders made by sales manager is to confuse appreciation with training whereby the management congratulates on the sales force for a good job, and at the same time dilute this feeling by immediately shifting to areas of improvement (Zahorsky 2011).
Sales people can consider it as lack of appreciation from the management. Therefore, to avoid such confusion, performance improvement areas should be saved for coaching sessions, and success stories should be appropriately celebrated even in small parties as these little gestures portrays respect and recognition of efforts.
A person who understands the overall goal and inspires others to make individual commitments towards achieving these goals is a good motivator.
Several ways to provide motivating environment include participation, whereby decisions affecting a team is made collectively, recognition in form of giving credit rewards and praise. it is also necessary to be aware of the company’s products and services and be able to communicate them well. The use of appropriate style for each situation, warm climate and creativity are crucial.
A key asset for any company is a formidable sales force, which ensures that the services and products of the company reach the intended customer. To recruit the sales people, the manager should know the required number based on sales projections and goals. Special emphasis on experience is important as this would reduce training cost.
Qualities such as hardworking, people with a positive outlook on life and good attitude as well as dedication to work are vital for sales people (Everett 51).
People who are resilient to discouragement and challenges that arise along the way, make good sales persons (Zahorsky 2011). To get such people, the recruiting team should engage existing sales persons and chose the best method of advertising, such as a use of local newspapers that covers a wide region. It is necessary to focus on the right attitude and personality during interviews.
Telemarketing
Telemarketing is defined as marketing operations which are done directly to sale some goods, gather marketing information, make meetings, and generate sales over the phone (Rank 2009). For any sale to take place by telemarketing, a first step is to identify potential customers.
This can be obtained from customer survey reports which explain various types of customers and their products and service needs. Past purchase records, telephone directories and customer databases from other companies are also good reference points (Louis 52). There are two types of telemarketing: in-bound and out-bound.
In-bound telemarketing includes handling of the customer responses generated by advertisements, direct mails and catalogs and taking orders for a variety of goods.
Customers use toll free 800 numbers, and call a company’s telephone service to place orders for goods and services (Rank 2009). Out-bound telemarketing is hands-on with the telemarketing company calling the end customers. The sales representative required for this requires more training than those for in-bound telemarketing.
Telemarketing has several advantages. It is cost effective and time saving when compared to personal selling. Small-scale businesses and big companies therefore prefer it. It only costs one fifth of the actual amount used through personal selling, when using telemarketing. Compared to direct mails, telemarketing is more expensive but it is more effective in closing deals than direct mails.
Telemarketing alone is an effective method of selling, but it is most profitable as a part of a general market endeavor. For telemarketing to bring positive change in any marketing strategy, managers should consider qualifying the type of products and services to be effectively sold over the telephone; the means of generating new business using telemarketing; the possibility of expanding sales volume using telemarketing and how the practice can help qualify forecast, characterize the markets and service existing customers.
Telemarketing applications includes selling, gathering information, creating new leads and improving customer services (McHatton 1988).
Products readily identifiable in the market and those whose purchases are repetitive can effectively be marketed using telemarketing. (Louis 52). Maintaining the existing customer of the company is important, as it is from this base that most of the business generates. Use of telemarketing enhances customer follow-up.
Telemarketing also acts a resourceful activity of obtaining future customers and sales leads, since the information of all prospective consumers gathered is store in a unique database. To determine the effectiveness of advertisement used by companies, telemarketing is a resourceful tool (McHatton 1988).
However, telemarketing faces many challenges such as swindles and fraudulent practices. This has contributed to great loses among people, making this practice less popular. As a result, the government has proposed several laws that deal with the practices of telemarketing.
Advancement in technology has also slowed the telemarketing industry (Briones 33). With the advent of a telephone screener, the privacy manager in 1998, telemarketers no longer have the freedom of calling all their prospective customers, since some of their calls do not go through because of screening by this system (Beatty 19). This has contributed negatively for the industry. However, newer methods of handling these challenges to sustain telemarketing as a leading sales strategy are available.
Customer Relationship Management
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a company-wide business strategy intended to reduce costs and increase profitability by solidifying customer loyalty (Chapman 2009). “It is the methodologies, software, and usually internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way” (Taylor 2009).
CRM system has many benefits to any business. Using CRM the company can govern their client contact information, follow patterns in their buying, and present value added services (Chapman 2009).
CRM has major effects in an organization such as shifting focus from product to customer and responding to customers’ needs rather than making what the company can produce, and also stress on competencies that valuable customer relationship management require.
Customers will often buy products that meet their various needs than buy inferior products regardless of the price. An effective CRM program takes a holistic method and emphasizes on delivering products and services of high quality, which creates pleasant experiences for the customers (Rank 2009). This enables the enterprise to get repeat businesses and increased referrals.
The CRM system is important as it helps enterprises to identify and target its best customers as well as provide the best service to this group, manage marketing campaigns and create quality leads for the sales force (Jones 2007).
It also helps in the improvement of telemarketing sales, accounts and sales organization by information distribution among the staff and streamlining on hand processes (Jones 2007). CRM also allows individualization of customer relationship and therefore a better understanding of the actual customer needs.
CRM systems also equip the staff with the right information to know and understand their customers’ needs as well as build good relationship between the company, its client base and distribution associates (Jones 2007).
Nevertheless the ultimate purpose for CRM is to increase the profit in an organization. CRM achieves this result by making sure that the company offers better services than its competitors, by improving customer service, reducing costs and wastage and possible complaints (Chapman 2009).
Companies can use the CRM system to improve and build customer relationship. CRM is a strong market research tool which gives instant feedback, and also opens avenues of communication with the customers (Chapman 2009). This makes it possible to receive direct market reactions on products and services feat.
Using this approach, the company is able to identify its customers and the obstacles that make it hard for the two to do business (Rank 2009). With this first hand information, the company should work to ensure that the products they deliver always solve the problems of the customer.
This will help improve customer loyalty and builds the company brands. The products developed by the company should always speak to the customer’s needs (Chapman 2009). In conclusion, a good CRM approach should be the one that address the exact need of the customer and also one that explains how to produce and deliver the coveted products to the customers. Therefore, CRM entails all aspects of dealings a business has with its clientele, and is therefore the basis of liaison marketing.
Works Cited
Beatty, Sally. “Ameritech’s New Phone Service Aims to Keep Telemarketers at Bay.” Wall Street Journal. 1998. Print.
Briones, Maricris. “IT, Privacy Issues Will Challenge Direct Marketers.” Marketing News. 1998: 32(8). Print.
Chapman, Alan. Customer Relationship Management. New York: Wiley, 2009. Print.
Everett, Martin. “It’s Jerry Hale on the Line.” Sales & Marketing Management. 1993: 75-79. Print.
Jones, Sonya. The Real Purpose of CRM. Kansas: Jantsch Communications. 2007. Print.
McHatton, Robert. Total Telemarketing. New York: Wiley, 1988. Print.
Rank, J. “Reference for Business.” Encyclopedia of Business. 2nd ed. 2011. Print.
Taylor, Steven. “The Importance of CRM.” Ezine articles. 2007. Web.
Zahorsky, Darrell. The Five Biggest Sales Management Blunders. New York: Prentice Hall, 2011. Print.