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Sales Management Definition
Sales Management is responsible for ensuring that the sales employees successfully implement the sales strategy and that sales can thereby achieve the agreed sales, earnings, and market goals.
The concept translates the strategy into the language of sales by drawing up an operational sales plan.
This sales plan must indicate which sales employee is responsible for which tasks, at what point in time, in what form, and addressed to whom.
It means that every sales employee has the guidelines at hand that enable them to make their contribution to the successful implementation of the sales strategy.
The task of sales management is now not only to develop such a sales plan, but also to hand it over to the sales staff, and to check to what extent the requirements implement.
A guide to sales management
Managing is not just about defining instructions. It includes planning, implementing, and managing sales.
For sales planning, it belongs indeed to define strategies and milestones, processes and tools for the implementation of the marketing.
- It is also part of the process to present the sales planning plausibly and understandably for the sales staff, to work out solutions together, and to inspire the sales staff.
- Sales management arranges meetings, talks with employees, or also participates in customer visits and customer contacts so that the knowledge gained can be useful to promote sales.
- Likewise, leading a sales team requires that sales staff be recruited, trained, qualified, and, last but not least, motivated.
- It includes checking the efficiency of sales and increasing them with the help of goal-oriented sales figures and sizes.
- However, modern and successful sales management does not control retrospectively but instead manages sales with foresight.
What are Strategies and Resources?
- One of the daily tasks of sales is to secure and maintain competitive advantages, to win new customers, and to bind existing customers to the company.
- Constantly changing market conditions, increasing competition, fiercely competitive markets.
- And also, the resulting changes in customers’ buying and usage behavior make these tasks a significant challenge.
- Also, there are inevitable customer losses and sales losses as a result of, for example, bankruptcies, mergers, or relocations.
- At the same time, the cost of gaining new customers is continuously increasing.
- This initial situation makes it necessary for sales management to understand its position as a leading position in the literal sense and not just as a supervisory authority.
What are the Four Aspects to manage a successful sales team?
noFollowing are the four aspects:
1. The salesforce must be convincing of the need to achieve the sales goals.
- It means that they must have internalized the goals and be willing to participate in the targets being achieved actively.
- However, this will only succeed if logical facts convince the sales staff, arguments motivated and qualified accordingly through incentives.
2. The sales staff must know the looting scheme.
- It means that every sales employee has to be clear which target groups should be reached by which sales activities and why.
- It makes sense here to form teams from the sales staff of the in-house and field staff.
3. To be able to implement sales activities in a targeted manner.
- In this context, it is advisable to divide the sales process into individual process steps and to define the key figures.
- It makes it easier to identify weaknesses and take countermeasures.
4. Successful sales require motivated and qualified employees.
- In this respect, it is essential to train the processes in the sales process in training courses and regular workshops.
- The training units should take all process steps into account, starting with the analysis of the target customers.
- And also, through the conclusion of contracts to the support of customers in the nofollow-up phase.
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