1. Introduction to SM
1. Introduction to SM
TO
SALES MANAGEMENT
INTRODUCTION
• Sales executives are seen as professionals in organizations today. They plan,
build, and maintain effective organizations and design and utilize efficient
control procedures.
• Society looks to them to assure the delivery of goods and services that final
buyers want at prices that buyers are willing to pay. If the goods and services
made and sold are needed and accepted by the buying public, then it is likely
that management's objectives will have been achieved.
• When the interests of the firm, the consumer, and society are achieved the firm
experiences sales volume, net profits, and business growth.
EVOLUTION OF SALES DEPARTMENT
• Prior to the Industrial Revolution, small-scale enterprises dominated the
economic scene, and selling was no problem.
• Concern was to produce more.
• Easy orders.
• Major problems associated with manufacturing.
• Selling and other marketing activities were handled on part time basis.
• With industrial revolution, large scale production started which actually
exceeded the current demand.
• This makes companies to look into new markets for selling.
• Other business problems were still important than selling such as hiring
of workers, land acquisition for building, machinery.
• For these activities, large amount of capital had to be raised.
• This resulting corporate form of business with separate functional
department.
EVOLUTION OF SALES DEPARTMENT
• Sales departments were set up only after the activation of manufacturing
and financial departments.
• New departments are being created for the performance of specialized
marketing tasks.
• Marketing activities today are carried on not only by the sales
department, but by such departments as advertising, marketing research,
export, sales promotion, merchandising, shipping, credits and collections.
• In spite of this growing' fragmentation of Marketing operations, the sales
department still occupies a strategically important position.
• Businesses rely upon their sales departments for the inward flow of
income.
• It has been said that the sales department is the income-producing
division of business.
DEFINITION
“Sales management" originally referred exclusively to the direction of
sales force personnel.
• Setting of goals
• Monitoring Performance of Sales
• Improving Development of Product
• Optimizing Distribution
• Decisions regarding Finance
• Improving quality of sales personnel
ROLE OF SALES MANAGER
• Sales managers are in charge of personal-selling activity, and their main job is
management of the personal sales force.
• Sales managers are now also responsible for organizing the sales effort, both within and
outside their companies.
• Within the company, the sales manager builds formal and informal organizational
structures that ensures effective communication not only inside the sales department but
in its relations with other departments.
• Outside the company, the sales manager serves as a key contact with customers and is
responsible for building and maintaining an effective distribution network.
• They are responsible for participating in the preparation of information critical to the
making of key marketing decisions, such as those on budgeting, quotas, and territories.
• They participate in decisions on products, marketing channels and distribution
policies, advertising and other promotion, and pricing.
• Thus, the sales manager is both an administrator in charge of personal selling activity
and a member of the executive group that makes, marketing decisions of all types.
OBJECTIVES OF SALES MANAGER
From the company viewpoint, there are three general objectives of sales
manager:
1) sales volume,
2) contribution to profits, and
3) continuing growth.
• Sales, gross margin, and expenses are affected by the caliber and performance of sales management,
and these are the major determinants of net profit.
• The cost-of-sales factor cannot be affected directly by sales management, but it can be affected
indirectly since sales volume must be large enough to permit maintenance of targeted unit costs of
production and distribution.
• The company maximizes its net profits if it obtains an optimum relationship among the four factors.
Sales management, both in its planning and operating roles, aims for an optimum relationship
among the three factors it can directly affect: sales, gross margin, and expenses.
• Sales management works with others (such as those in charge of production and advertising) to
assure that sales volume is sufficient to attain targeted cost of sales, the fourth factor.
SALES MANAGEMENT AND
ORGANIZATIONAL COORDINATION
Optimum marketing performance in terms of sales volume, net profits,
and long-term growth requires coordination, and sales management has
to play a significant role in coordinating.