J Case

SM Technologies Ltd.
3
Arun Kumar, head, Bangalore branch office of SM Technologies, was wondering what sales strategies he
should use to achieve ambitious targets of 40 per cent growth in sales and profits set for the company's
Bangalore branch office for the year 2004-05.

THE COMPANY BACKGROUND

SM Technologies was a fully owned subsidiary of a UK based group, which had operations in 20 countries
across five continents. The company had built state-of-the-art optic fibre telecom networks in India. It
offered broadband enabled internet services, such as voice, data, and video, across 10 major cities Mumbai,
Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Surat, Ahmedabad, Baroda, and Vishakapatanam, with plans
to roll out to other cities in future.
The company's registered office was located in Mumbai. Satish Mehta, CEO for Indian operations
launched its services in India in 2001 and within a short span of time, it had become one of the fastest growing
broadband players.

SERVICES OFFERED10e sit

fnori
SM Technologies offered broadband enabled services to corporate (or business) and home (or domestic)
users. For corporate users the company offered the following business services:
'
Data connectivity services

Voice Connectivity services i e t u 39101:li i oi0g

Managed services Gif 77 D , 99Yitiin375 helc) sr f
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International bandwidth services t i rl.iobp l i ui:
the company' included world-class broadband network,
For home users, the Internet services offered by
live audio and video, Internet telephony,
which would facilitate fantastic surfing and downloading speed,
the broadband network was set up in a residential area, the company offered
chat, and gaming. However, till
saver for those
dial-up internet packs. In particular, the company's Internet telephony service was a great cost
who wanted to make înternational calls to their near and
dear ones.
users
COMPETITION

Some of the major competitors

of SMM Technologies were:

Relience Infocom
 Airtel1
VSNL (Tata Teleservices)
BSNL
Hathway
Satyam Infoway (Sify)
Spectranet
Sales and Marketing Organisation at Bangalore
Each of the 10 offices in India, including Bangalore, had a location head, to take care of overall sales an
marketing administration. the sales
Typically structure was as shown in Exhibit 1.
organisation
30 1g : 9 G
Exhibit 1 Sales Organisation Structure at Branch Office

Branch Head

Sales Sales
ManagerCorporate Manager-Retail

Asst. Sales .)6 fufe i

t

Asst. Sales
Manager-Corporate
Manager-Retail

Salespersons-Corporate Salespersons-Domestic/
Home

PRESENT SALES STRATEGY

The company had a unique
composition of the salesforce. For corporate clients, each branch sales office had
three or four sales engineers who were called direct
based on their performance
employees and were paid a fixed salary and commission
against salesquotas. For home (or domestic) users,
salespersons on contract basis and these salespeople were compensated by straight the company employed
salespeople were given monthly sales targets (or sales quotas), which were divided commission method. The
targets. Salespersons were asked to submit daily reports to assistant into weekly and daily sales
sales managers in a standard format. The
daily sales callreport gave information about the
prices, strengths, weaknesses, and so on. A close salesperson's
client visits; outcome of
the visit; competitors
chance of doing any manipulation, such as over control on salespeople had ensured that
salespersons had no
promising customers to achieve sales targets.
Salespeople were required to have a high level of technical
negotiating, and selling skills. To ensure this, the company had a knowledge as well as
communication,
at all its branch sales offices. tie-up with a leading sales training institute
Selling technical service was a
strategy was to give due importance to training salespeople. challenging task, and therefore, the company's
In spite of an effective training
programme, some salespersons could not achieve their
The sales manager talked to these
salespeople, used mock sales presentations monthly sales targets.
order to identify the causes of including video recording, in
performance decline, and suggested the areas of corrections.
DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS
The company used direct channels of company salesforce, online selling through its website, and telemarketing
For business customers, for ensuring long-term business relationships, the company used its corporat
salespersons, and for household and individual customers, the company used its domestic salespersons. Onine
selling and telemarketing channels were mainly used for prospecting. If the prospective customers, corporate
and domestic, needed visits of the company salespersons, the same was arranged to make a proposal and saies
presentation, negotiation, and closing the sale. The company had a separate team of engineers or technicians
for installation and after-sales service.

PROMOTION
SM Technologies participated in the national and international relevant trade shows and exhibitions. These
generated sales leads, prospects and new customers. The company advertised regularly in telecom jounals
and on the Internet. In addition, the company was on the list of sponsors for cricket matches. Third party
references used
were by
the company promote
to its services to clients. These promotional tools
potentiäl
helped salespeople, as they created awareness and brand image for the services offered by the company.
Arun Kumar was not sure whether the present sales and distribution strategies would be adequate to
achieve the ambitious growth targets. No'doubt the broadband market had an immense potential to grow. But
the competition was also intense. Arun kumar wondered what new sales strategy can be used to ensure the
targets of 40 per cent growth in sales and profits are achieved. .ivus bac 9 i

Questions
1. Do you have any comments on the existing strategies and practices?
2. Would you like to suggest any new strategies or tactics in order to achieve the targets?