Marketing essay writing help analysis on: Sales person advantages & disadvantages

Q??

You are the Sales Manager of an electrical goods distributor. One day you receive a telephone call from a very good long term customer regarding the changed behaviour of one of your senior Sales Representatives. Your customer advises that the Sales Representative is rude and uncooperative, missed scheduled appointment and is extremely aggressive. What would you do in such a situation?

Solution

When faced with such an issue, as the sales manager of an electrical goods distributor, there are several steps that need to be taken to handle the multiple stakeholders involved. These are outlined below and characterized in terms of customer, salesperson and sales organization.

A) Customer: There are several urgent actions that need to be taken when a customer informs about such an event. Firstly, there must be an immediate verbal and documentary apology to the customer. The customer needs to be reassured that the current instance is unique and such behaviour will not be repeated again. Good feedback and testimonials from other clients must be displayed and quoted prominently to help in this regard. Focus must not be placed on the current product sales opportunity and instead look at the retaining the long term relationship with the customer. Increased warranty or waiving off the service cost in cases of retail customer and increasing the credit limit in case of wholesale customers may be offered as a goodwill gesture. An alternate arrangement for the customer must be made so that he/she can interact with the best sales representative on a temporary basis. Most importantly the customer must be notified about the action being taken with respect to the troublesome salesperson (Allen& Bourhis, 2002, pp.83-97)B) Salesperson: An immediate review of the historical record of the salesperson is needed to verify if the instance is unique or if the salesperson has previously engaged in such behaviour. Interact with the salesperson in private and find out about the reasons for his/her actions (Christopher & Kevin, 2008, pp.740-752).Check for personal/professional problems that may be affecting his performance. Also look at any attitudinal issues he/she may have with respect to co-workers, superiors as well as subordinates. Since he/she is a senior salesperson, consultation must be made with previous supervisors to find out any issues they may have faced and how they resolved them. Based on this information, disengage the sales representative from other customers if needed. Most importantly, a decision must be made to fire or retain him/her. If the decision is made to retain the salesperson, he/she must be retrained to correct and resolve all issues and kept under close observation for a period of time to check for any subversive tendencies.

C) Sales organization: A critical link to inspect when such an instance occurs in a sales organization is to review other instances of such events or misdemeanours by salespersons. This must be done both chronologically and for all sales people on the team. There must an immediate review and re-evaluation of the incentive-punishment system in place in the organization (Brennan, 2007, pp.50-53).Although not strictly conventional, it is also recommended to tap into the office grapevine and get a feel for the ground realities and behavioural aspects of the members of the sales force team. Most importantly, the information and findings must be shared with the other sales managers so that they can identify and prevent similar scenarios within their purview.

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of building customer relationship via the internet??

The use of internet and web technologies has transformed the way analytical CRM is implemented by firms. There are numerous advantages and disadvantages of building customer relationships via the internet as elaborated below.Advantages

1. Accuracy and cost:  The key feature of internet based customer relationship building is the reduced human involvement in the capture and handling of consumer data. Much of the tasks can be automated and this reduces the possibility of human error to a great extent. As a consequence, data is more reliable and free from bias of any sort. The cost of employing staff required to monitor online CRM tools is usually less than employing a large number of customer care representatives (Allen& Bourhis, 2002, pp.83-97)

2. Speed of analysis: The enormous computational power offered by the internet and revolutionary new technologies like Web2.0 offer marketers great speed at analysing consumer trends and data captured during customer acquisition online. This offers multiple advantages like speeding up of the rest of the sales cycle and reduction of the bullwhip effect in which demand distortion affects the production and sales teams.

3. Consumer insights: Consumers leave rich digital information on CRM software about trends and preferences which cannot undergo distortion either by market research firms or by sales team because it comes directly from customers. Moreover, the internet enables firms to capture virtually all data which may be pertinent to current and future sales as well. All of this enables firms to thoroughly analysis consumer data and draw deep insights about existing as well as potential customers.

4. A 24×7 presence: The existence of online customer management facilities gives firms a 24×7 ability to respond and interact with customers. This is highly valued by consumers and could to higher levels of customer satisfaction. Moreover, the unlimited working hours of an automated system equipped to acquire and retain consumer online gives firms with limited resources a much greater geographical coverage at a much lower cost than firms which do not use customer engagement mechanisms via the internet (Christopher & Kevin,2008, pp.740-752)

Disadvantages

1. Target customer pool: The greatest disadvantage of building customer relations via the internet is the reduction in the customer base that can be targeted. The number of target consumers who use the internet as well as their degree of exposure to the organization’s CRM tools may be limited. The degree of this problem depends largely on the kind of product being sold. For instance, it is not viable for a distributor of farm fertilizer to reach his potential target market as the rural penetration of the internet may be quite low (Baker, 2004, pp.33-36)

2. Personalized connect: When the customer relationship is built online, there is no scope of establishing a personalized one-to-one connection between customers and sales personnel. Certain consumers may not be comfortable with or receptive to product purchases online. They may have a preference for a brick-and-mortar approach to buying. Moreover, the members of the sales team may be much more effective in person than online (Bersin, 2005, pp.26-28)

2. Transactional selling: It is not meaningful for companies that employ a transactional sales approach to use the internet for establishing customer relations. This approach encourages sales teams to identify a prospect, pitch the product and make the sale and then move on to the next target. In such a scenario it online CRM offers no utility because there is no concept of planned repeat sales.

3. Creation of dependencies: Reliance on building customer relationships online implies commitment of major resource and dependence on the CRM software and the capabilities for revenue generation. Moreover, outsourcing of development and maintenance of CRM software to third party vendors leads to a high reliance on an external vendor for effectively building customer relationships. Although carefully chosen, the vendor can never be fully familiar with the intricacies of the industry or customer segments the firm is operating in.

If you pay a sales person enough money you will have a well motivated sales person. Do you agree? Explain your reasons.

It may be generally seen in most cases that target-linked commissions and sales force performance are positively correlated. But this observed correlation is not indicative of causality. Compensation in monetary terms is just not enough by itself to motivate sales persons to perform to the best of their ability. There are numerous other forces that motivate sales people. It is the imperative of the sales managers to identify these sources of motivation. Moreover, managers must buttress them by taking steps and measures that are aligned to these motivational forces in order to maintain and inspire the sales team. This concept is elaborated as below.Motivational sources: By their very nature, people attracted to the sales function are driven by an achievement directive that is interwoven into the selling process itself. Task accomplishment and fulfilment are given an extremely high priority. Compensation in monetary terms is merely a quantitative indicator that allows salespeople to benchmark their success at the job (Brown, 2001, pp.271-296). There are several qualitative aspects related to selling. The most obvious is a strong spirit of competition among sales persons. A lot of value is attached to performing better than the peer group consisting of fellow salespersons. It is very important to recognize that salespeople are unique individuals with highly personalized styles of working. Different salespeople derive satisfaction from different aspects of the job of selling. Some gain confidence from the power and influence they tend to exert on the will of customers although it may be to a limited extent. Others take pride in their ability to aid customers in making the right choices (Brown& Ford, 2005, pp.192-233). Within the peer group, making a sale is rewarded with respect from fellow salespeople and the salesperson may associate a sense of pride with the process of selling (Brennan, 2007, pp.50-53)

Motivational measures: Given the wide range and nature of motivational forces that drive salespeople, managers need to take necessary steps to build and maintain them. The foremost is the necessity to create a work environment which fosters a healthy spirit of competition within the individuals of a sales team as well as among different teams. The territories and targets assigned must take into consideration the capabilities and selling style of the salesperson. They must be imbibed with a firm belief in the product’s benefits to customers to keep them motivated to sell effectively. The reward system employed by the sales organization must incorporate various non-monetary incentives which include awards like employee of the month, best managed sales territory award, sales team of the quarter etc. The sales manager must arbitrate any disputes calmly and in a fair manner taking into consideration purely the professional aspects and without any personal judgement on the salesperson’s character. Moreover, in order to truly motivate the sales team, the manager must lead by example. Most of all, there must be clarity to each and every salesperson on the trajectory of their career path and the rate of their progress along it.

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