marketing chapter 13: personal selling and sales promotion

compensation: fixed amount

usually a salary, gives the salesperson some stable income.

outside sales force (or field sales force)

Outside salespeople travel to call on customers in the field. In contrast, inside salespeople conduct business from their offices via telephone, online and social media interactions, or visits from buyers. The use of inside sales has grown in recent years as a result of increased outside selling costs and the surge in online, mobile, and social media technologies.

Organizational climate

describes the feeling that salespeople have about their opportunities, value, and rewards for a good performance. Some companies treat salespeople as if they are not very important, so performance suffers accordingly.

workload approach

Using this approach, a company first groups accounts into different classes according to size, account status, or other factors related to the amount of effort required to maintain the account. It then determines the number of salespeople needed to call on each class of accounts the desired number of times.

represent customers to the company

acting inside the firm as "champions" of customers' interests and managing the buyer-seller relationship. Salespeople relay customer concerns about company products and actions back inside to those who can handle them. They learn about customer needs and work with other marketing and nonmarketing people in the company to develop greater customer value.

sales force management

analyzing, planning, implementing, and controlling sales force activities. -includes designing sales force strategy and structure as well as recruiting, selecting, training, compensating, supervising, and evaluating the firms salespeople. ex:Sales force structure: Whirlpool specializes its sales force by customer and by territory for each key customer group.

top-salespeople

are always in demand, and paying them less might mean losing them at a time when they are most needed

short-changing key salespeople

can result in short-changing important customer relationships. If the company must reduce its compensation expenses, rather than making across-the-board cuts, companies should continue to pay top performers well while turning loose low performers.

return on sales investment.

company wants to measure

sales force automation systems

computerized, digitized sales force operations that let salespeople work more effectively anytime, anywhere.

salesperson

covers a wide range of positions. -salesperson might be largely an order taker, such as the department store salesperson standing behind the counter. -other extreme are order getters, whose positions demand creative selling, social selling, and relationship building for products and services ranging from appliances, industrial equipment, and airplanes to insurance and IT services. -Salespeople link the company with its customers. To many customers, the salesperson is the company.

customer(or market) sales force structure

-a company organizes its sales force along customers or industry lines -separate sales forces may be set up for different industries, serving current customers versus finding new ones, and serving major accounts versus regular accounts -organizing the sales force around customers can help a company build closer relationships with important customers

territorial sales force structure

-each salesperson is assigned to an exclusive geographic area and sells the company's full line of products or services to all customers in that territory. -organization clearly defines each salespersons jobs and fixes accountability. -increases the salespersons desire to build local customer relationships that improve selling effectiveness - often supported by many levels of sales management positions -ex: individual territory sales reps may report to area managers, who in turn report to regional managers who report to a director of sales

inside salespeople

-telemarketers -online sellers -use the phone, Internet, and social media to find new leads, learn about customers and their business, and sell and service accounts directly. -effective, less-costly ways to sell to smaller, harder to reach customers ex: a telemarketer can make from 20 to 33 decision-maker contacts a day, compared with the average of four that an outside salesperson can make.

major steps in sales force management

1) designing sales fore strategy and structure 2) recruiting and selecting salespeople 3) training salespeople 4) compensating salespeople 5) supervising salespeople 6) evaluating salespeople

sale force compensation

A good compensation plan both motivates salespeople and directs their activities.

the best salespeople are driven by a strong sense of purpose: "The salespeople who sold with noble purpose, who truly want to make a difference to customers, consistently outsold the salespeople focused on sales goals and money." Selling with such a sense of customer-related purpose is not only more successful, it's also more profitable and more satisfying to salespeople.

But motivation and discipline mean little unless they result in closing more sales and building better customer relationships. Super salespeople build the skills and knowledge they need to get the job done.

great salespeople

Great salespeople: The best salespeople possess intrinsic motivation, a disciplined work style, the ability to close a sale, and, perhaps most important, the ability to build relationships with customers. -Super salespeople are motivated from within—they have an unrelenting drive to excel. Some salespeople are driven by money, a desire for recognition, or the satisfaction of competing and winning. -Others are driven by the desire to provide service and build relationships. The best salespeople possess some of each of these motivations.

sales force size

Sales forces may range in size from only a few salespeople to tens of thousands. Some sales forces are huge—for example, in the United States, PepsiCo employs 36,000 salespeople; American Express, 23,400; GE, 16,400; and Cisco Systems, 14,000.

force's workload

The company might think as follows: Suppose we have 1,000 A-level accounts and 2,000 B-level accounts. A-level accounts require 36 calls per year, and B-level accounts require 12 calls per year. In this case, the sales force's workload—the number of calls it must make per year—is 60,000 calls [(1,000 × 36) + (2,000 × 12) = 36,000 + 24,000 = 60,000]. Suppose our average salesperson can make 1,000 calls a year. Thus, we need 60 salespeople (60,000 ÷ 1,000).

represent the company to customers

They find and develop new customers and communicate information about the company's products and services. They sell products by engaging customers, presenting their offerings, answering objections, negotiating prices and terms, closing sales, servicing accounts, and maintaining account relationships.

sales reports

including weekly or monthly work plans and longer-term territory marketing plans.

inside sales force

inside salespeople conduct business from their offices via telephone, online and social media interactions, or visits from buyers. -use of inside sales has grown in recent years as a result of increased outside selling costs and the surge in online, mobile, and social media technologies. -inside salespeople provide support for the outside sales force, freeing them to spend more time selling to major accounts and finding new prospects.

goal of motivation

is to encourage salespeople to "work hard" and energetically toward sales force goals.

goal of supervision

is to help salespeople "work smart" by doing the right things in the right ways.

salesperson-owned loyalty

lends even more importance to the salesperson's customer-relationship-building abilities. Strong relationships with the salesperson will result in strong relationships with the company and its products.

personal selling

people who do the selling go by many names, including salespeople, sales representatives, agents, district managers, account executives, sales consultants, and sales engineers -Professional selling: It takes more than fast talk and a warm smile to sell expensive airplanes. Boeing's real challenge is to win business by building partnerships—day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out—with its customers.

sales assistants

provide research and administrative backup for outside salespeople. -They track down sales leads, call ahead and confirm appointments, follow up on deliveries, and answer customers' questions when outside salespeople cannot be reached. -using of combination of inside and outside salespeople can help serve important customers better

Sales meetings

provide social occasions, breaks from the routine, chances to meet and talk with "company brass," and opportunities to air feelings and identify with a larger group.

technical sales-support people

provide technical information and answers to customers' questions.

team selling

service large, complex accounts -Sales teams can unearth problems, solutions, and sales opportunities that no individual salesperson could. Such teams might include experts from any area or level of the selling firm—sales, marketing, technical and support services, research and development, engineering, operations, finance, and others.

sales quota

standards stating the amount they should sell and how sales should be divided among the company's products

social selling

the use of online, mobile, and social media to engage customers, build stronger customer relationships, and augment sales performance -New digital sales force technologies are creating exciting new avenues for connecting with and engaging customers in the digital and social media age. Some analysts even predict that the Internet will mean the death of person-to-person selling, as salespeople are ultimately replaced by Web sites, online social media, mobile apps, video and conferencing technologies, and other tools that allow direct customer contact.

positive incentives

to increase the sales force effort.

sales contests

to spur the sales force to make a selling effort above and beyond what is normally expected. Other incentives include honors, merchandise and cash awards, trips, and profit-sharing plans.

complex sales force structure

which combines several types of organization. Salespeople can be specialized by customer and territory; product and territory; product and customer; or territory, product, and customer. For example, Whirlpool specializes its sales force by customer (with different sales teams for Sears, Lowe's, Best Buy, Home Depot, and smaller independent retailers) and by territory for each key customer group (territory representatives, territory managers, regional managers, and so on). No single structure is best for all companies and situations. Each company should select a sales force structure that best serves the needs of its customers and fits its overall marketing strategy.

compensation: variable amount

which might be commissions or bonuses based on sales performance, rewards the salesperson for greater effort and success.

product sales force structure

which the sales force specializes along product lines -ex: GE employs different sales forces within different product and service divisions of its major businesses. -GE Infrastructure, the company has separate sales forces for aviation, energy, transportation, and water processing products and technologies. -no single salesperson can

call reports and turn in expense reports

which they are partly or wholly reimbursed.