MAP: Sales & salesforce management

In this chapter we expand on themes introduced earlier – relationships, the salespipeline, and communicating. It is important to realise that all relationships have a starting point and attracting [suspects and prospects] and converting [suspects and prospects to customers] is a critical to achieve the financial marketing objectives. Therefore, managing sales enquiries [also known as ‘sales-leads’ or ‘leads’] is worthy of further discussion.

Directions

Discuss lead management an often neglected area of management. The components of the salespipeline, accountability in marketing practice

Handouts

Please click on the image to download the handouts

3-3-7-MAP-sales-salesforce-management-a-2021
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3:3:7 marketing action plans [sales & salesforce management]  

A central theme of the e-book is that organisations that adopt the marketing concept are philosophically different from organisations that adopt the selling concept or the production concept.

We have also stated that as organisations are an amalgam of people – some of whom may be enculturated in other concepts – therefore it is safe to say that organisations that have adopted the marketing concept and are practicing a marketing philosophy will have some employees that were enculturated in the selling and production concepts. Therefore, it is important to nurture a marketing philosophy and develop a marketing culture – this is particularly important in sales and sales management.

We have stated that the business philosophy will determine the culture of the organisation and therefore the way the organisation behaves – how they do business. Organisations that operate from a production and selling philosophy tend to focus on organisational profit and see the sales process as a one-off exchange to achieve satisfaction for the organisation; whereas organisations that operate from a marketing philosophy will see profit as multi-factorial and focus on customer and organisational satisfaction. Moreover, organisations that view customer retention as a key success factor generally view the exchange as a buying process rather than a selling process and view the exchange as an opportunity to serve the customer and develop a long-term profitable relationship.

Activity: Taking your eye of the ball

In this activity we eavesdrop on a fictional conversation where the need to manage sales and the salespipeline are emphasised. The objective of the activity is to firstly highlight the importance of talent management and to encourage students to consider methods of measuring and managing sales performance.