Sales management is a process by which a group of people and resources are coordinated to achieve the sales goals of a company. It involves a series of policies and procedures that serve as a guide to carry out all this series of actions.
Policies and procedures clearly determine how to recruit, select, supervise, motivate and evaluate the sales force. The sales force is in charge of carrying out the sales management. Proper sales management must find new opportunities, make sales forecasts, manage reports and techniques. All of these tasks will help those involved to achieve their goals.
However, sales management must involve several processes and activities. If these are done efficiently, it will help the business grow and make more profits.
Sales management activities
For sales management to be effective and productive, the following activities must be carried out:
1. Control the sales process
First, the sales manager is the person who takes personal responsibility to ensure that each stage of the process is completed in the indicated time. For this reason, it is convenient to make a sales plan so that everything stipulated is fulfilled. If any stage is carried out out of time or is not carried out, it can negatively affect the results.
2. Sales planning
Second, sales planning is essential because it establishes the objectives and expected goals. In the sales plan it is necessary to define some important criteria. These criteria will be the target audience, the buying and selling cycle, the strategies to be implemented and the way how to relate to competitors.
However, the most important thing is to determine the objectives. These goals must be realistic for them to be achieved. In addition, they should be communicated to all sales team personnel. Planning is essential for any company that wants to achieve its goals.
3. Hiring talented people
Third, the manager will need to hire people who are skilled and talented in performing sales tasks. Recruitment should be a careful process, because hiring the wrong staff can be very costly for the company. There is even a risk of high staff turnover.
Of course, to achieve the goals, the company needs to have people who have the capacity to perform these activities. But, mainly, that they are committed to the team and that they work together.
Also, to hire staff, you can use employment agencies or the company’s human resources department. The selection process may require experienced or inexperienced personnel. In the selection, a battery of tests can be passed and a series of interviews is carried out to choose the best qualified professionals to fill the positions.
Additionally, you can request other information such as references, background and any other information that may be important to make the decision.
4. Team training
Finally, team training is another essential component in sales management. If a company wants its sales team to improve its sales skills and techniques, it must maintain a continuous training process.
The training also helps the sales team learn more about important aspects of the company such as the policies implemented, the products it sells, the profile of the clients and everything related to the planning of the organization.
Sales management activities
Sales process management
Now, the management of the sales process is the series of steps that people must take to make an effective sale. This process begins as soon as the attention of a potential customer is captured and ends in the concrete action of a sale of the goods and services offered by a company.
To manage the sales process, it is required:
- Know the product : Basically you need to know what the product is, what it is for and what it means for the customer.
- Customer prospecting : It must be possible to identify the set of customers whose needs the product being sold can satisfy.
- Contact with the client: It consists of being able to introduce yourself to the client and have a first approach.
- Identify the need: Contact with the client allows us to identify their needs. It is necessary to listen to the client so that he expresses what his needs and problems are.
- Product presentation: Only when the needs are known should the product be presented, explaining what the product can do for them (the customers).
- Sale closing : The sale closing occurs after the customer’s objections are clarified, who agrees to buy the product.
Steps in the sales management process
How can good sales management keep people motivated?
To achieve good sales management, it is necessary that the people in the sales team are motivated. For that reason, to keep the team motivated it is required:
1. Set realistic goals
Naturally, if the goals are very high, people, no matter how hard they try, cannot achieve them. This causes them to feel frustrated because, even if they do a great job, the goals are impossible to achieve. Whereas, if the objectives are realistic, they are adapted to the market and with a reasonable effort, people achieve the proposed objectives.
In any case, the compensations that people receive are related to the fulfillment of the sales quotas. Sales quotas are determined in the sales plan and are based on sales forecasts. The fees will depend on aspects such as the territory, the amount of work required, the size of the market, among some other relevant aspects.
2. Rewards
Similarly, the sales force remains motivated by the rewards it receives. Among the most significant rewards are monetary payments, promotions, personal growth, and achievement. Although recognition and respect are also important.
In other words, what motivates the sales force the most is the payment received because with it they can solve their needs. But they are also motivated by praise and recognition in terms of meeting psychological needs.
How to evaluate the sales management process?
To evaluate the sales management process you need to have enough information. The most important sources of information are sales reports, customer letters and complaints, conversations with representatives, and meeting sales quotas.
Consequently, all this data is compared to the sales plan for the purpose of getting the appropriate feedback. Feedback can only be done after evaluating sales force performance.
The best indicators of sales force performance are:
- Average sales visits from each salesperson per day.
- Average time of the sales visit in each contact.
- Average revenue per sales visit.
- Average cost per sales visit.
- Average cost of training.
- Number of orders for every hundred visits.
- New customers by sales period.
- The cost of the sales force over the total percentage of sales.
To conclude, we can affirm that efficient sales management needs a good recruitment and personnel selection process first of all. This allows for trained professionals. Then, a training process for the sales force to learn about the company’s products, the policies implemented and the sales techniques used.
In addition, it is required to keep the team motivated to commit to meeting the goals. Finally, the performance evaluation must be done to provide feedback and strengthen compliance with the plan.