Sales Management
Dr. Gopal Thapa
Tribhuvan University

Sales Management
• the planning, direction and control of selling
personnel including recruiting, selecting,
equipping, assigning, routing, supervising,
paying and motivating as these tasks apply to
personnel sales force
AMA

Sales Management
• The process of planning, organizing,
controlling, and evaluating, the activities of
the sales force.
Dictionary of Marketing

Sales Management includes:
• Defining desired corporate results.
• Working with business partners to ensure goals of both
organizations complement one another.
• Determining the specific activities required to achieve
company and partner objectives.
• Implementing a compensation plan that motivates
salespeople to achieve corporate objectives.
• Providing needed training and coaching to enable
salespeople to meet their goals.
• Establishing appropriate monitoring systems to ensure
activities are taking place.
• Measuring results.

Objectives of Sales Management
• Sales volume
• Contribution to profits
• Continuing growth

Sales Executives as Coordinator
• Organization and coordination
• Planning and coordination
• Coordination with other elements of
marketing program

Coordination with other elements of
marketing program
• Advertising
• Distribution
Gaining distribution
Obtaining dealer identification
Reconciling business goals
Sharing promotional risks

Coordination and Implementation of
overall marketing strategy
• Coordination in timing and best sequence of
execution of various phases.
• Introduction of new brand requires policies,
strategies and detailed plans.
• All of them should be appropriate to the
company’s marketing situation
• Launching brand at the wrong time or faulty
timing at any stage , kills or reduces the
chances of success.

Coordination and Implementation of
overall marketing strategy
• It is not enough for sales executives to know
the techniques and problems of new-brand
introduction
• They must be capable of putting the plans into
action, to implement them effectively.

Sales Management and Control
Type of Control Prime
Responsibili
ty
Purpose of Control Approaches
Annual plan control Top level managers To examine whether the
planned results are being
achieved
- Sales analysis
-Market shares analysis
- Marketing expenses to
sales ratio
Profitability
control
Sales controller To examine where the
company is making or
losing money
-Customer attitude
-Tracking profitability by
- Product territory
- Market share
-Trade channel
- Order size
- Sales audit

Steps in Designing a Sales Control System
• Objective setting
• Designing different control levels
• Designing a reporting system and a feedback
system
• Deciding tools and techniques of control
• Variance analysis and reasons thereof

Sales Management and Control
• Sizing of the situation: by analyzing present,
past and future
– Where are we know?
– How did we get there?
– Where are we going?
– How do we get there?

Sales Management and Control
• Setting quantitative performance standard
• Gathering and processing data on actual
performance.
• Evaluating performance
• Action to correct controllable variation
• Adjusting for uncontrollable variation

Sale Control
• Informal sales control
– Effective sales executives have their “fingers on
the pulse of the business”
– They have strange ability to detect situations that
require attention
– The larger the company , the harder it becomes
to use fingertip control
– As the business grow and becomes complex it
demands formal control

Sale Control
• Formal control and written sales policies
– A large organization not only has more complex
problems than small organization but there is less
chance that everyone will know what to do in
every situation
– The large organization needs written sales and
marketing policies to ensure substantial
uniformity of action
– Written policies also conserve executive time

Sales Control
• Policy formulation and review
– It indicates dynamics of executive control
– Sales management reviews the original plan
– Through successive revisions, policy initially based
on inadequate data often become appropriate
and good

Sales Control
• Budgetary control
– Budgetary control represents an extension of
control over sales volume to control over margins
and expenses and hence over profit
– Sales management can project individual profit
and loss statement for such units as sales
territories, product, marketing channels and
classes of customers

Sales control
• Formal control over sales volume
– Estimating how much of a product can be sold in a
specified future period is a prerequisite both for
planning and control
– Sales volume performance is best appraised by
comparing it with potential sales volume.
– Sales forecast serves as a standard for evaluating
sales performance

Sales Control and Organization
• Control depends on decentralization
• In decentralized organization greater control is
exercised by lower executives than in the
centralized organization.
• The higher up executives are in the organization,
the more they deal with policy or control except
top, situations falling outside the control limits
are handed up to that executive who has
authority to deal with them.

Buyer Seller Dyads
• The interaction between a buyer and a seller
comprises a buyer-seller dyad.
• It is the effectiveness of communication between
the salesperson and the customer during the
sales process decides the success of the sales call.
• The seller can interact with the buyer by using
various techniques.
• The most important of them all, where both get
an equal opportunity to express, is personal
selling

Personal Selling
• The oral presentation of a company’s
products, or services to one or more
prospective purchasers for the purpose of
making a sale.
• It is the art of successfully persuading
prospects or customers to buy products or
services from which they can derive suitable
benefit thereby increasing their total
satisfaction, i.e., delight.

Personal Selling & Salesmanship
• Salesmanship is a seller initiated effort that
provides prospective buyers with information and
motivates them to make favourable decisions
concerning the seller’s product or services.
• Personal selling is a two-way communication
involving individual and social behaviour.
• It aims at bringing the right product to the right
customer. It is used for creating product
awareness, stimulating interest, developing brand
preference, negotiating price, etc.

Personal Selling & Salesmanship
• Personal selling is used extensively in complex
and highly technical products
• It is used for selling to industrial consumers
who may be having technical queries and
want to purchase in bulk.
• The increase in competition from foreign and
domestic sources has increased the
importance of personal selling.

Personal Selling
• The salesman acts as a catalyst and consultant to the
customer by providing information and benefits of the
products.
• He also works out the details, manner and timing of giving
physical possession to the customer.
• Personal selling is basically used during the product
launching stage when a firm cannot afford a large
expenditure for advertising.
• Personal selling is an integral part of communication mix.
• It becomes important because it educates the consumer
and makes him understand the special functions and
attributes of the product.

Personal Selling and Advertising
• Personal selling involves an alive, immediate
and interactive relationship building between
two or more persons.
• Each party is able to observe the other’s
needs and characteristics at close hand and
make immediate adjustment

Personal Selling and Advertising
• Personal selling permits plenty of relationships
to spring up, ranging from a matter-of-fact
selling relationship to deep personal
friendship.
• Effective sales representatives will normally
keep their customers best interest at heart if
they want to maintain long term relationship.

Personal Selling and Advertising
• Personal selling puts the buyer under some
obligation for having listened to the sales talk.
The buyer has the greater need to attend and
respond, even if the response is a polite
“thank you”.
• A sales force represents a greater long term
cost commitment than advertising.
• Advertising can be turned on and off, but the
size of sales force is much difficult to alter.

Advantages of Personal Selling
• Ability to close sales.
• Ability to hold customer attention.
• Immediate feedback and two-way
communication.
• Presentation is tailored to individual needs.
• Ability to target customer precisely.
• Ability to cultivate relationship.
• Ability to get immediate action.

Disadvantages of Personal Selling
• High cost per contact.
• Uncontrolled message and exaggeration
• Not suitable for low involvement product
• Unnecessary pressure to prospects
• Inability to reach some customers effectively

New Approaches in Selling
Telemarketing
Televised shopping
E-marketing
Kiosk marketing
Catalog marketing
Direct mail

Diversities of Personal Selling
Situations
• Service Selling
• Developmental Selling

Service Selling
• service selling aims to obtain orders from existing
customers whose habits and patterns of thought
are already conducive to the products.
• This type of selling is less complex as the
customers already know the brand.
• Service selling also includes sales of newer or
enhanced versions of products offered by the
company

Developmental Selling
• Developmental selling aims at converting
prospects into customers.
• It attempts to create customers out of people
who may not, view the company products
favourably, be unaware of the company’s
products, or are resistant to changing their
present source of supply.
• It is relatively tougher than service selling. It
requires a lot of convincing before a customer
finally agrees to buy the product.

Service Selling
• Inside Order Taker:
• Delivery Salesperson
• Route or Merchandising Salesperson
• Missionary Salesperson
• Technical Salesperson

Developmental Selling
• Creative salesperson of Tangibles
• Creative Salesperson of Intangibles

Is Selling Science or Art?
• In a survey of 173 marketing executives:
Art – 46%
Science – 8%
Art evolving into science – 46%

AIDAS Theory
• A – Attention
• I – Interest
• D – Desire
• A – Action
• S - Satisfaction

AIDAS Theory
• Based on art
• Based upon experiential knowledge
• Prospect’s mind passes through five successive
mental states:
Attention
 Interest
Desire
Action
Satisfaction

AIDAS Theory
• The prospect goes through these five stages
consciously.
• Sales presentation must lead the prospect
through them in the right sequence if a sale is
to result.