“Everyone lives by selling something”

Chapter One:

Introduction to Sales Management

 Introduction to Sales Management
LEARNING OBJECTIVES

This chapter will do the following:

 Define sales management and Provide you with an overview

of a sales manager's job.

 The Five Functions of Sales Managers

 Major Parts of an Organizational System

 Sales Management Skills

 1.1 What is Sales Management
 Sales management is the attainment of sales force goals in an
effective and efficient manner through planning, staffing,
training, leading and controlling organizational resources.
 This definition covers the ideas:
1. The five functions of planning, staffing, training, leading,
and controlling.
2. The attainment of organizational goals in an effective and
efficient manner.
3. The sales management process uses resources to attain goals.
 Although some sales management theorists identify
additional management functions, such as organizing,
communicating or decision making, those additional
functions will be discussed as subsets of the five primary
functions.

 Sales management: meant management of all marketing

activities, including advertising, sales promotion, marketing
research, physical distribution, pricing and product
merchandising.
• The American Marketing Association has defined sales
Management as: the planning, direction and control of
personnel selling, including recruiting, selecting, assigning,
routing, supervising, paying and motivating as these tasks
apply to the personnel sales force.
• Sales management is the process of developing a sales force,
coordinating sales operations and implementing sales
techniques that allow a business to consistently hit and even
surpass its sales targets.
• It includes the planning, implementation and control of sales
programs, as well as recruiting, training, motivating and
evaluating members of the sales force.
• Sales management directs the personal selling effort which in
turn is implemented largely through salesmanship
• Salesmanship is one aspect of personal selling and never all of
it.
• Salesmanship is the art of successfully persuading prospects
or customers to buy products or services from which they can
derive suitable benefits.
Sales as a profession meets some criteria
 It operates from a substantial knowledge base that has been
developed by academics, corporate trainers & professional
organizations.
 Sales make a significant contribution to society.
 Sales has professional defined culture and organization of
colleagues.
 Sales have a unique set of professional skills
 Types of Sales Jobs
1.Selling in Retail:- A retail salesperson sells goods or services
to consumers for their personal or non-business use.
2.Direct Sellers:- Face to face sales to consumers, typically in
their homes, who use the products for their personal use.
3. Selling for a Wholesaler
For resale, for use in producing other goods or for use within
an organization
4. Selling for a Manufacturer
Works for the firm who manufacture (produce) the product.
This is usually one of the most prestigious jobs to hold
 Rewards
1. Non-financial
 Intrinsic reward of knowing you’ve skillfully delivered a sales
presentation.
 Quick path to managing large amounts of responsibility
 Quick path to managing others
2. Financial
 Higher average income than that of other co-workers at the
same level within the organization based upon performance.
 Role of Sales Manager
Sales Management Trends

Transactions Relationships

Individuals Teams

Sales Volume Sales Productivity

Management Leadership

Local Global
 1.2 Functions and activities of sales managers
 Sales managers are in charge of personal-selling activity and
their primary assignment is management of the personal sales
force.
 Sales managers are responsible for organizing the sales effort
both within and outside their companies.
 Sales managers are involved in both the strategy (planning)
and people (implementation) aspects of personal selling, as
well as in evaluating and controlling personal selling
activities.
sales manager is both
1. an administrator in charge of personal-selling activity and
2. a member of the executive group that makes marketing
decisions of all types.
Sales managers work with and through individuals and groups
in the company, in the sales force and the sales manager’s
main goal is to achieve the levels of sales volume, profits and
customer satisfaction desired by high levels of management.
Activities of sales manager:-
 Developing the strategy needed to reach sales goals.
 Properly designing and organizing sales forces around
markets.
 Understanding the roles and activities of each sales job.
 Training sales personnel.
 Directing people's effort through effective motivation,
compensation and leadership.
 Analyzing and evaluating sales efforts.
Sales Management Functions
 Planning
• Planning defines where the organization wants to be in the
future and how to get there.

• Planning is a systematic process of making decisions about

goals and activities that an individual, group work unit or
organization will pursue in the future and the use of
resources needed to attain them.

• The most important part of managers’ function involves

planning the sales effort at organizational level.
The most important part of managers’ function is
deciding
o what is to be done in the future,
o with whom to do it,
o how and when to do it to achieve organizational
goals.
• In other word, these points indicate the function of
planning.
 Staffing
• People are the most important parts in the management
process. manager usually can not do the job alone.
• Staffing refers to activities undertaken to attract, develop and
maintain effective sales personnel within the organization so
as to achieve organizational goals effectively and efficiently.
• Staffing involves two important activities:
1. People planning determines how many people and the type
of salespeople to hire.
2. Employment planning:- consists of recruiting, selecting and
socializing people into the sales group.
 Training
• Sales managers spend much of their time training their
salespeople.
• Sales training is the effort put forth by an employer to
provide the salesperson job-related culture, skills, knowledge
and attitudes that result in improved performance in the
selling environment.
• Some authors distinguish between training and development.
training usually refers to teaching people how to do their
present job, whereas development refers to teaching people
the skills needed to do both their present and future jobs.
 LEADING
• The fourth sales management function is to provide leadership
for sales personnel-salespeople as well as sales managers.
• Leading is the ability to influence other people toward the
attainment of objectives.
• Leading means communicating goals to people throughout the
sales group and infusing people with the desire to perform at a
high level.
• For top corporate sales managers, leading involves motivating
entire departments and divisions as well as those individuals
working immediately with the manager.
 Controlling
 A combination of a comprehensive plans, good people,
quality training and outstanding leaders still does not
guarantee success for the long run.
 Controlling means monitoring sales personnel's activities,
determining whether the organization is on target toward its
goals and making corrections as necessary.

 Sales managers must ensure continuously that the

organizations moving toward its goals.

 Managers must also provide people with feedback or

information about their progress.
 1.3 Organization system
 An organization is a social system that is goal directed and
has a deliberated structure.
 Social means being made up of two or more people.
 A system is a set of interdependent parts that process inputs
into outputs.
 Goal directed means an organization is designed to achieve
some outcome.
 Deliberated structure means that tasks are divided and the
responsibility for their performance is assigned to
organization members.
 Major Parts of an Organizational System
• The sales manager's responsibility is to coordinate resources in
an effective and efficient manner to accomplish the
organization's sales goals.

• Organizational effectiveness is the degree to which the

organization achieves a stated objective. Organizational
effectiveness also means providing a good or service that
customer’s value.

• Organizational efficiency refers to the amount of resources

used to achieve an organizational goal.
• Efficiency is based on how much raw materials, money and
people are necessary for producing a given volume of output.

• Efficiency is calculated by the amount of resources used to

produce goods in the organization.

• Whether managers are responsible for the entire organization

as a whole or a single sales group, their ultimate
responsibility is performance—performance as defined by
their individual organization.
• For profit organizations performance usually involves
sales volume, profits and customer satisfaction.

• For not-for-profit organizations, performance, such as at a

university or charity, involves fund raising (contributors)
and getting people to use their goods or services (clients).
Organizational System
 Sales person career path
The beginning managerial level is usually the district sales
manager's position.
The district sales manager is responsible for usually three to
ten salespeople in one district.
From here a person may move into higher levels of sales
management, such as that of the zone sales manager,
responsible for three to five districts, and that of the regions
sales manager, who oversees three to five zone.
A person also may move from any of the management levels
into the training, recruiting, product management, promotion
or marketing research areas.
Sales person career path
 1.5 Sales Management Skills
• A sales manager's job is diverse and complex and, requires a
range of skills. the necessary skills for planning, staffing,
training, leading and controlling can be summarized in three
especially important categories:

 all managers need each skill, but the amounts differ by

hierarchical level.
1. Conceptual and decision skills:- refer to the cognitive
ability to see the organization as a whole and the relationships
among its parts.
Conceptual skills involve the manager's thinking and planning
abilities.
They include knowing where one's group fits into the total
organization and how the organization fits into the industry and
the community.
They mean the ability to think strategically—to take the broad,
long-term view.
2.People skills:- involve the manager's ability to work with and
through other people and to work effectively as a group
member.
 These skills are demonstrated in the way a manager relates to
other people, including the abilities to motivate, facilitate,
coordinate, lead, communicate and resolve conflicts.

3. Technical skills:- are the ability to perform a specialized task

that involves a certain method or process. They include ,
techniques and equipment involved in specific functions such
as selling, training and recruiting.

 Technical skills also involve specialized knowledge, analytical

ability, the competent use of tools such as computers and
techniques to solve problems in that specific discipline.
Thank You