Operational Sales Management

Running Head: SALES MANAGEMENT 0
OPERATIONAL SALES
MANAGEMENT

SALES MANAGEMENT 1
Sales managers are the conductors of a company revenue engine. They not only create high
performance sales team but also nurture them to generate higher sales in respect with meeting
the objectives of business enterprise. Sales manager is responsible to inspire their teams and
assist them to meet their goals while meeting necessary customer needs. Moreover, running a
sales team is a big challenge and success will always depend on the team ability to meet up
performance goals (Cadogan, Lee, Tarkiainen and Sundqvist, 2009).
For an organization, sales need to stay alive in the same way like human needs water.
Business will not be alive if there were no sales. Moreover, the key factor in closing sales is
building of relationships (Piercy, Cravens and Lane, 2012). Salespeople and sales managers
are both familiar with the products that they sell and also best procedures in which the
product need to be sold to potential customer. However, Salespeople work directly with the
public in selling of products and sales manager oversee teams of sales people.
Knowing how to sell and effectively communicate is very important for the sales person. To
sell a products, the sales man need to communicate with the potential customers. These sales
people are also responsible to maintain relationships with the clients, following leads and
generate referrals (White, Absher and Huggins, 2011). They need to have an adequate
information about the product they are selling so as to raise more level of customer
satisfaction. By passing off clients after the sales, they are also passing an opportunity to
increase profits, reduce churn and build a meaningful customer experience.
In any organization, the ultimate KPI for an objective of sales management is revenue.
However, to achieve a forecast performance, the major objective established by sales
manager is – coaching of salespeople on their behaviours, skills and techniques, recruiting
reps, forecasting of sales performance as per quarterly, monthly or yearly basis, evaluating
and tweaking sales process (Ingram, LaForge and Schwepker Jr, 2007). One of the major
aspects in increasing the performance of salespeople is sales force organization. It is the
process of allocating and managing sales resources to achieve sales and marketing goals. An
effective sales force organization provides account and geographic coverage, minimizes
wasted resources and time and confirms a higher probability of achieving sales quotas.
For achieving respective sales target, it is necessary to align overall sales with the marketing
strategy (Hughes and Ahearne, 2010). Moreover, one of the most significant aspect of sales
force organization is to allocate the resources to respective sales territories. Sales force
organization takes account of business skills and specialization. For example, if the company

SALES MANAGEMENT 2
is selling complex technical products, sales manager will recruit salespeople who are good in
technical knowledge so that they can effectively sell the product to the potential customer.
Moreover, the company can also invest training programme where technical skills of the sales
people can be developed. An important element in sales force organization is the support
available to direct sales efforts (Sullivan, Peterson and Krishnan, 2012). Organization can
enhance productivity of salespeople with the help of telemarketing team to cover time-
consuming tasks, for example, setting up of appointments, low value orders. The quality of
salespersons’ prospect can be improved by developing lead generation programme in
response to creating relationship with marketing. These are all the roles in respect will
improving sales people performance.
The next phase where sales manager can influence performance of sales people is with the
help of effective recruitment. Recruitment involves all the actions manager engage in to
acquire pool of qualified candidates for vacant position (Rodgers, Stenhouse, McCreaddie
and Small, 2013). In the process of recruitment, sales manager can select the right sales
people to do significantly improve in performance by focusing on the personal characteristics
and traits. These personal traits fall into various broad categories like – physical traits (age,
height, sex and physical attractiveness), psychological traits (general and verbal intelligence,
mathematical ability, and previous sales experience), personality traits such as (empathy,
dominance, sociability and need for achievement).
By identifying the personnel with these aptitudes, sales manager can ensure future success in
relation with the performance of the sales people. Moreover, brewing managers always
emphasis to hire more of the sales person that would be perceived by customers as relatively
more knowledgeable and experienced. In addition, they need to hire sales person with
positive personality traits that will help in dealing with the people – such as ego drive,
dominance and aggressiveness (Tilson and Simonsen, 2013), needed for the achievement of
the sales target framed by the executives of organization. Therefore, it can be said that
recruiting and selecting the right people is an important aspect for every sales manager and
this can use to improve sales performance of the sales people.
But like any skill, even naturally adept salespeople need to hone their skills with the help of
consistent sales training. It is necessary for the organization to invest in training to ensure
salespeople have the skills needed for success. This belief is supported by both research and
experience that training can enhance sales person performance. However, it is important that