Managing Sales Force

We know that sales force management is the analysis, planning, implementation and control of sales force activities. To manage the sales force, it has some steps. These are as follows:
• Designing sales force strategy and structure
• Recruiting and selecting sales people
• Training sales people
• Compensating sales people
• Supervising sales people
• Evaluating sales people
These steps are as follows:
• Designig sales force strategy and structure: Marketing managers face several sales force strategy and design question. How should sales people and their tasks be structured? How big should be sales force be? Should sales people sell alone or work in teams with other people in the company? On the basis of above Questions Company design the sales force strategy and structure. Sales force structure is influenced by sales force strategy. The decision is simple if the company sells only one product line to one industry with customers in many locations. In that case the company would use a territorial sales force structure.
• Recruiting and selecting sales people: At the heart of any successful sales force operation is the recruitment and selection of good sales people. For this reason company select the experienced and experts sales force. Company can select the sales force from the internal source or external source of the company.
• Training sales people: Many companies used to send their new sales people into the field almost immediately after hiring them. They would be given samples, order books and general institutions. Although trainings can be expensive, it can also yield dramatic returns on the training investment training program have several goals, sales people need to know and identify with the company. So most training program begin by describing the company's history and objectives its organization, its financial structure and facilities and its chief products and markets.
• Compensating sales people: To attract the sales people company offers attractive package to the sales force. The success of the company depends on the operation of sales people. Again the performance of sales people depends on the quality of sales depends on the attractiveness of the package. So, company should offer huge compensation to the sales people.
• Supervising sales people: Now sales people need more than a territory, compensation and training. They need supervision. Through the supervision the company directs and motivates the sales force to do a better job.
• Evaluating sales people: It is the last step in the sale force management. In this step to evaluate the sales people require good feedback. Good feedback means getting regular information about sales people to evaluate their performance. Management get information about its sales people in several ways. The most important source 's sales reports. The sales manager might begin with a quantitative evaluation, looking at a sales person's knowledge of the company, products, customers, competitor's territory and task.

Major Sales Promotion Tools

Sales promotion is a short term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or services. Many tools can be used to accomplish sales promotion objectives. We can describe the sales promotion tools in below ways:
• Consumer promotion tools
• Trade promotion tools
• Business promotion tools
They are summarized in below:
• Consumer promoting tools: The main consumer promotion tools include
a. Sample: A small amount of a product offered to consumer for trail.
b. Coupons: Certificate that gives buyers a saving when purchase a specific product.
c. Cash refunds (rebate): Offer to refund part of the purchase price of a product to consumers who send a proof of purchase to the manufacturer.
d. Price packets: Reduced price that is marked by the producer directly on the local or package.
e. Premium: Good offered either free or at low cost an incentive to buy a product.
f. Advertising specialist: Useful article imprinted with an advertiser's name, given as gift to consumer.
g. Patronage rewards: Cash or other reward for the regular use of a certain company's products or service.
h. Point of purchase displays and demonstration etc: Display and demonstrations that takes place at the point of purchase or sale.
• Trade promotion tools: Trade promotion are as follow:
a. Discount: A straight reduction in price on purchase during a stated period of time.
b. Allowance: Promotional money paid by manufactures to retailers in return for an agreement to feature the manufacturer's product in some way.
• Business promotion tools: Companies spend huge amount each year on promotion to industrial customers. These business promotions are used to generate business leads, stimulate purchase reward customers and motivate people. Business promotion includes many of the same tools used for consumer or trade promotion.

Public Relations,Major Tools,Personal Se

• THE ROLE OF THE SALE FORCE: Personal selling is the interpersonal arm of the promotion mix. Advertising consists of one-way non personal communication with target consumer group. In contrast, resonal selling involves two way personal communication between sales people and individual customer. Whether face to face by telephone, through video conferences or by other means personal selling can be more effective than advertising in more complex selling situations. Sales people can probe customers to learn more about their problems. They can adjust the marketing offer to fit the special needs of each customer and can negotiate terms of sale. They can build long term personal relationship with key decision makers.
• PERSONAL SELLING: Personal selling is an individual acting for a company by performing one or more of the following activities, prospecting, communicating, servicing and information gathering.
Personal selling means directly sale the product to the customer.
• MAJOR TOOLS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS:
• Sponsorship: Company participates in car racing, sports, cricket, boat racing or any other publication.
• Trade show: Trade show represents a great opportunity to build brand awareness, knowledge and interest.
• Club and consumer communicate: Company many arrange to build any club where consumer can enjoy and communicate with each other.
• Societal cost marketing: Company may spend money for any social welfare activities.
• Social development: Company may involve in the social development activities such as they may prepare hospital, bridge, culvert, barriers, etc.
• PUBLIC RELATIONS: Another major mass promotion tool is public relations. It makes good relations with the company's various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories and events.
Public relation departments may perform any or all of the following functions.
• Press relations
• Product publicity
• Public affairs
• Lobbying
• Counseling

Selecting Advertising Media

It has some steps in selecting advertising media. The major steps in media selection are
• Deciding on reach, frequency and impact
• Choosing among media types
• Selecting specific media vehicles
• Defieing on media timing
They are summarized in below:
• Deciding on reach, frequency and impact: To select media, the advertiser must decide what reach and frequency are needed to achieve advertising objectives. It is a measure of percentage of people in the target market who are exposed to the advertising campaign during a given period of time. Frequency is a measure of how many times the first three months of the campaign.
• Chopping among major media types: The media planner has to know the reach frequency and impact of the major media types, the major media types are newspapers, television, direct mail, radio, magazines, outdoor and the internet. Each media has advantages and limitations media planners consider many factors when their media choices.
• Selecting specific media vehicles: The media planner must decide the best media vehicles. Media planners must compute the cost per thousand persons reached by a vehicle.
• Deciding on media timing: The advertiser must decide how to schedule the advertising over the course of a year. The firm can vary its advertising to follow the seasonal pattern to oppose the seasonal pattern or to be small all year.

Advertising, Major Advertising Decision

ADVERTISING: Advertising is any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor.
MAJOR ADVERTISING DECISION:
Marketing management must make four important decisions when developing an advertising program these four important are as follows:
• Setting advertising objectives
• Setting advertising budget
• Developing advertising strategy
• Evaluating advertising campaign
They are summarized in below:
• Setting advertising objectives: The first step is to set advertising objectives. These objectives should be based on past decisions about target market, positioning and marketing mix, which define the job that advertising must do in the total marketing program advertising is a specific communication task to be accomplished with a specific target during a specific period of time. Advertising objectives can be classified by primary purpose-where the aim is to inform persuade or remind.
• Setting advertising budget: After determining its advertising objectives the company next sets its advertising budget for each product. A brand's advertising budget depends on its stages of product life cycle. Market share also impacts the amount advertising needed. Because building the market or taking share from competitors requires larger advertising spending than does simply maintaining current share, high share brands usually needs more advertising spending as a percentage of sales.
• Developing advertising strategy: Advertising strategy consists of two major elements.
a. Creating advertising message
b. Selecting advertising media
In the past companies often themed media planning as secondary to the message, creation process. These creative departments first created good advertisement then the media department selected first created good advertisement then the media department selected the best media for carrying these advertisements to desired target audience.
• Evaluating advertising campaign: It is the last step in major decision of advertising. In this stage evaluate the message of advertising. How much people get attention on the message of advertising. Its market covering capacity, style, tone, words and format etc are evaluated in this stage.

Promotion

Promotion mix (Communication Mix): Promotio mix consist of the specific mix of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations and direct marketing tools a company uses to pursue its advertising and marketing objectives.
That means, the promotio mix has five distinctive tools, these are advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations and direct marketing. They are summarized in below:
• Advertising: Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods and services by an identified sponsor.
• Personaling selling: Personal selling is the personal presentation by the firm's force for the purpose of making sales and building customer relationships.
• Sales promotion: Sales promotion is a short term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service.
• Public relations: Public relations is building good relations with the company's various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image and handling or heading off unfavorable quotmss, stoppi and events.
• Direct marketing: Direct marketing is direct communications with carefully targeted individual consumers to obtain an immediate response and cultivate lasting customer relationships through the use of telephone, mail, fax, e-mail, the internet, and other tools to communicate directly with specific customers.
INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION
Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC): Integrated Marketing Communication is the concept under which a company carefully integrates and coordinates its many communication channels to deliver a clear, consistent and compelling message about the organization and its product. In another way, integrated marketing communications involves identifying the target audience and shaping a well coordinated promotional program to obtain the desired audience response too often marketing communications focus an immediate awareness, image, or preference goals in the target market. We can show the integrated marketing communication through the below figure:
Advertising ~ Personal Selling
Sales Promotion ~ Public Relations-~Consistent, clear and compelling company and product message
^Direct Marketing^
Figure: Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)
COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
To communicate effectively, marketers need to understand how communication works. Communication involves the nine element shown in the below figure:
Sender > Encoding > Message* > Decoding > Receiver
^|Feedback < Response <___|
Sender Field of Experience * = (Media
Noise) Reciever Field of Experience
There are nine elements in the above figure and two of those elements are the major parties in a communication, the sender and the reciever. Another two are the major communication tools-the message and the media. Four are major communication functions-encoding, response and feedback. The last element is noise in the system. The definition of these elements is as follows:
• Sender: The party sending the message to another party.
• Encoding: The process of putting thought into symbolic form.
• Message: The set of symbols that the sender transmits.
• Media: The communication channels through which the message moves from sender to reciever.
• Decoding: The process by which the receiver assigns meaning to the symbols encoded by the sender.
• Receiver: The party receiving the message sent by another party.
• Feedback: The part of the receiver's response communicated back the sender.
• Noise: The unplanned static or distortion during the communication process, which results in the receiver's getting a different message than the one the sender sent.
STEPS IN DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
• Identify the target audience
• Determine the communication objective
• Design a message
• Choose the media through which to send the message
• Select the message source and
• Collect feedback

Wholesaler

Wholesaler includes all activities involved in selling goods and services to those for resale or business use. It purchases or services from the producers but they sell it to the reseller for resale or business users.
Types of wholesaler: Wholesalers fall into three major groups. They are as follows:
• Merchant wholesalers
• Brokers and agents
• Manufacture's sales branches and office.
They are summarized in below:
• Merchant wholesalers: Merchants wholesalers are the largest single group of wholesalers accounting for roughly 50% of all wholesaling. Merchant wholesalers include two broad types:
a. Full service wholesalers and
b. Limited services wholesalers
Full service wholesalers provide a full set of services whereas the various limited service wholesalers offer fewer services to their suppliers and customers.
• Brokers: Brokers is one type of wholesaler who does not take title to goods and whose function is to bring buyers and sellers together and assist in negation.
Agent: Agent is a wholesaler who represents buyers or sellers on a relatively permanent basis performs only a few functions and does take title to goods.
• The third major type of wholesaling is that done in manufacturer's sales branches and offices by sellers or buyers themselves rather than though independent wholesalers.
Wholesalers marketing decisions
• Wholesaler strategy
• Target market
Service
Positioning
• Wholesaler strategy
• Product and service assortment
Prices
Promotion
Places(location)
• Figure: Wholesaler marketing decisions