Sales Force Management

*

2

The Process of Selling and Buying

2-*

Case for Focus on the Sales Process

• Scale sales force by teaching how to succeed
• Measure and manage
• Design selling process according to how customer buys
• Team sales require clearly defined roles for each member

Source: HR Chally Group (2009).

2-*

• Recognize key drivers of change in selling and sales management.
• Understand best practices in selling.
• Explain historical basis for stereotypical views of selling.
• Point out reasons why sales jobs can be highly satisfying.
• Identify and explain key success factors for salesperson performance.
• Discuss and give examples of types of selling jobs.
• List and explain roles in an organizational buying center.
• Describe relationship between buying and selling centers and the nature of team selling.
• Outline stages in organizational buyer decision making.
• Point out nature of different organizational buying situations.

2-*

Drivers of Change in Selling and Sales Management

• Building long-term customer relationships
• Creating sales organizational structures that are more nimble and adaptable to customer needs
• Gaining greater job ownership and commitment from salespeople
• Shifting management style from commanding to coaching
• Leveraging technology for sales success
• Integrating salesperson performance evaluations

2-*

2.1 IBM More Nimble by Gaining Clarity

• Nimble firms
• Monitor and communicate w/ customers
• Proactive to meet customer needs
• Practice adaptive selling
• Flexible, open to creative solutions
• Strategies
• Group salespeople into teams to serve selected customers
• Seven-step selling method
• Universal reporting system
• Single 30-minute meeting w/ managers per week

Source: Erin Strout, “Blue Skies Ahead?” Sales & Marketing Management, March 2003, pp. 25-29. Reprinted with permission.

2-*

Attractiveness of Sales Careers

• Autonomy and opportunities for personal initiatives
• Variety of challenging activities
• Financial rewards
• Favorable working conditions
• Excellent opportunities for development and advancement

2-*

2.2 Create Your Own Creativity

• Balance routine with change
• Take time to play
• Optimism
• Courage
• Seek to creatively solve crises
• Take responsibility

Source: Bill Brooks, “How to Create Your Own Creativity,” American Salesman, October 2002, pp. 3-6; Michael Malon. “A Creative Approach to Sales.” Broadcasting &

Cable, May 11, 2009.

2-*

2.1a

Compensation trends in selling

2-*

2.1b

Compensation trends in selling

2-*

Source: Joseph Kornik, “2007 Compensation Survey.” Sales & Marketing Management, May 2007, pp. 27–39.

2.1c

Compensation trends in selling

2-*

2.3 Virtual Office

• Benefits
• Better work-life balance
• Real estate and overhead cost savings
• Environmental impact of fewer commuters
• Drawbacks
• Out of sight out of mind?
• Isolation

2-*

2.2

Possible career tracks for salespeople

2-*

Selling Success Factors

• Listening skills
• Follow-up skills
• Ability to adapt sales style to situation
• Tenacity
• Well organized
• Verbal communication skills
• Able to interact with people at all levels of an organization
• Ability to overcome objections
• Closing skills
• Personal planning and time management skills

2-*

2.4 Active Listening Skills

• Pay attention
• Withhold judgment
• Reflect
• Clarify
• Summarize
• Share

2-*

Source: Adapted from William C. Moncrief III, “Selling Activity and Sales Position Taxonomies for Industrial Salesforces,” Journal of Marketing Research 23 (August 1986), pp. 266–71.

2.4

Job sales factors

Distribution

Traveling

Entertaining

Training and Recruiting

Attending Conferences and Meetings

Servicing the Account

Managing Information

Servicing the Product

Working with Others

Selling

Selling Job Factors

2-*

Source: Greg W. Marshall, William C. Moncrief, and Felicia G. Lassk, “The Current State of Sales Force Activities,” Industrial Marketing Management 28 (January 1999), pp. 87–98.

2.5

Updated selling activities matrix

2-*

2-*

B2C vs. B2B

• Most salespeople are involved in retail selling (B2C)
• Larger volume of sales accounted for by industrial selling (B2B)
• Sales to resellers
• Sales to business users
• Sales to institutions

2-*

B2B Jobs

• Trade servicer – provides customers with merchandising and promotional assistance
• Missionary seller – persuades customers to buy products from distributors
• Technical seller – offers current customers technical/engineering assistance
• New business seller – identifies and obtains business from new customers

2-*

2.6

Selling process stages

2-*

Prospecting

• Core competency
• Sales fundamental
• Critical to increasing sales
• Hard work
• Delayed payoff
• Requires design and discipline
• Enhanced by software

2-*

Opening the Relationship

• “The approach”
• Who is likely to have the greatest influence to initiate the purchase process?
• Generate interest to obtain information needed to qualify a prospect
• Identify key decision makers, desires, and relative influence

2-*

Qualifying the Prospect

• Does prospect have a need for product?
• Possible to make prospect aware of need?
• Will the sale be profitable to the company?

2-*

Sales Message Presentation

• Purpose
• Transmit information
• Persuade prospect to become a customer
• Common complaints about sales presentations:
• Running down competitors
• Too aggressive or abrasive
• Inadequate knowledge of competitors’ products and services
• Inadequate knowledge of client business/organization
• Poor delivery

2-*

Closing the Sale

• Begins with first contact
• Requires
• “Asking for the order”
• Trial Close
• Understanding the prospect and buying process
• Paced by the salesperson
• Requires continual improvement

2-*

Servicing the Account

• Excellent service bolsters loyalty
• Follow up to check satisfaction
• Product
• Installation
• Training
• Maintenance
• Billing
• Satisfied customers = Repeat customers

2-*

2.5 Improving Closing Chances

• Greet with a smile
• Customer should feel in control
• Be product neutral
• Actively listen
• Give space
• Learn customer’s goals
• Enquiry before presentation
• Never answer unasked questions
• Ask for contact information
• Make every experience remarkable

2-*

Buying Process Participants

• Initiators – perceive problems/opportunities requiring new product or service
• Users –use or work with product or service
• Influencers –provide information for evaluating products or suppliers
• Gatekeepers – control flow of information
• Buyers – contact selling organization and place order
• Deciders – final authority to purchase
• Controllers – determine budget

2-*

Selling and Buying Centers

• Bring together individuals to help salespeople be more effective
• Establish team selling structure to meet customer needs
• Matrix organization – direct reports and internal consultants provide expertise
• Key account – team managed by senior salesperson dedicated to serving important customer

2-*

2.7

Organizational buying decision stages

2-*

2.8

Consumer versus organizational buyer behavior

2-*

Organizational Buying Situations

• New-task purchase – first-time purchase of complex and expensive product or service
• Modified rebuy – requires modification to existing purchase decision and may open the door for new suppliers
• Straight rebuy – reorder item purchased many times in the past

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Mark W. Johnston | Greg W. Marshall