Commercial Bank: Sales Strategies, Recruitment, and Marketing Analysis

This report examines the sales and marketing strategies of Commercial Bank, focusing on personal selling's role within the promotional mix. It analyzes consumer behavior variables and decision-making processes, using a loan advertisement as a case study. The report further explores the roles of the sales force in marketing strategy, including market analysis, sales forecasting, and strategy selection. Additionally, it delves into sales strategies designed to support corporate objectives and the importance of effective recruitment and selection procedures within sales management, highlighting their impact on the bank's success in a competitive market. The report emphasizes the significance of a well-qualified sales team in promoting services and maintaining a strong corporate image.

2.0 Task 1
2.1 Personal selling functions support promotional mix elements
One of the sectors within the service industry that has been influenced the most by the
changes in the globalization process and at the same time has been highly internationalized, is
the banking sector. So in competitive market if the commercial bank has to survive
successfully it needs to attract customers by offering them wider range of services. But to sell
this wide range of services, bank needs to employ different promotions to attract the
customers and to make them purchase from the banks.
One of the key aspects of marketing mix is promotion. So this consist of another major five
elements as follows.
 Advertising
 Sales promotion
 Public relation
 Personal selling
 Direct marketing
Above mentioned elements are called as promotional mix or communication mix. So the
organization could employ one or more elements from promotional mix depending on the
service, type of customers, company status and image.
Commercial bank Plc. is a service rendering company which have high demand and leading
in finance sector. But today most of Sri Lankan consumers are facing financial difficulties.
And potential customers are not willing to save their money since the cost of living is very
high and etc. Therefore commercial bank need to use those promotional mix elements to push
customers towards their services.
Mainly advertising services, here will give a good aware about their services to their potential
customers and it will pursue customers towards purchasing those services. So the use of
personal selling is more important and helpful to build a good and close relationships with the
bank and customers. For example when the bank introduce a new service like loan scheme or
new saving account for students and graduates the primary objective is awareness or giving a
simple message about the service. In like these situations personal selling is more important
for the advertising. Because to attain the objectives use of salesperson and communicating
with the new customers in face to face in home or in their education centres help to build

goodrelationships and pursue to purchase the services. And when the customers’ demand is
low towards the bank they can use sales persons to encourage and aware them about new
benefits that they can receive from the bank rather advertising in TVs, newspapers and
websites.
The personal selling is often the firm’s best source of public relations. In their day to day
activities sales persons represent the bank and for their services. For examples like public
appearances in sponsor activities, speaking engagements outside the bank for public need
personal selling. And when country faced recession in the economy for example fall in rupee
value and natural disasters commercial bank engage in those public activities in awakening
and offering their support by use of personal selling.
Any company integrating direct marketing, specifically telemarketing in to their fields of sales
operation makes their activities more effective. So in here bank can aware about their services and
new coming up `facilities to their customers by sending letters, leaflets and phone calling by the use
of personal selling. And use of personal selling supports the bank to reduce cost, improve satisfaction
and loyalty towards the customers. Other hand Commercial bank send direct mails to their loyalty
customers about new offerings like discount rates for credit cards and seasonal offering services by
using personal selling functions.
Generally sales promotions targeted at resellers benefit the sales force as well. And some sales
promotion tools have an attention in gaining quality that communicates an offer that will not be
available again to purchase something special. In Commercial bank giving and offering coupons and
other forms of price manipulation tools can be used to aware their services to their customers using
personal selling. Also their main objective of sales promotion is to attract new customers, to increase
their level of deposit accounts and to increase market share. So all these can be possible to achieve by
sending sales persons to selected different market segments. Examples, for new account holders they
send gifts, pens, coupons etc.
And this suggest that personal selling is much effective in making the awareness of the product
towards the purchase. Other hand it enables to explain all the aspects regarding the product to the
customers and also enables the bank to gather market information, feedbacks, etc. Most important
advantage on personal selling is that even though the Commercial bank is not purchased by the
customer, the sales person gets to build a good relationship.

2.2 Comparison of consumer behaviour variables with consumers’ decision making
process
Customers of Commercial bank Plc. can be divide in to two as individual customers and
organizational customers. And according to VALS these customers can be mainly identify as
strugglers, where most of individual customers who are generally in rural areas with limited
resources and makers which like to perform new things under do it yourself category as
shown in the advertisement of the loan programme.
So when discuss under psychological factors it includes information processing, beliefs,
attitudes, life styles, etc. which have personal of group influences on consumer behaviour. In
this advertisement it clearly have perception role or process where people force to select and
interpret sensory motivation into reality andalso give learning advices how to adapt in to
better environment while supporting necessary financial service.So here the development
loan advert depicts a background of rural area with limited resources and gives a message to
both strugglers and makers that all the difficulties they will have to face in performing their
activities.And after few years of understanding advert try to show that he try to develop and
make new changes to his business in time to time. That is presented by different changes in
background like environmental changes and withsome changes in his costumes, transport
modes and emotions in his face, etc. So accordance with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs this
loan advert described and showed higher level needs are dormant until lower level needs are
satisfying. That is why this advert address customers from step by step development from
low level to high level of needs, without directly showing that he is self-actualised by taking
the loan. Further in the start of the advertisement showing some psychographic factors like
self-respect where he was admired by another person in his village and sense of
accomplishment which he think what he is going to do next. And by these things it clearly
give good perception and learning to customers.
But even there is good psychological consumer behaviour, customers is aware of needs or
wants and search for possible ways to satisfy those in any time. So the awareness of
consumer is not an automatic process but it is actually selective external procedure. And there
are five stages in consumer decision making process which link with this advertisement.
First, is the problem recognition, which the consumer recognizing a problem as a need or
want. For example here he had a problem of developing his business activities and he

receives new information about a good service to overcome from those hardships.Because it
can allow him to satisfy his accomplishments.
Second the information search, which consumer is searching for information that is helpful in
making purchasing decision. In this consumer can get information in many ways like
commercial advertisements, personnel selling, newspapers, etc. That’s why this
advertisement launching successfully among consumers which help to carry out right
information and to meet customer needs to them.
Next stage is information evaluation, where consumers try to compare services with their
features and benefits from the bank. Related to this advertisement customers that going to
purchase will focus and compare on interest rates, amount of money they receive and
monthly or annual payments for the bank with other competitors.
In fourth stage customers need to perform a research on the service and evaluated the best
alternatives. Example here if they now ready to make the purchase on loan and they compare
the amount of money that is going to spend, and at that time if that amount is unaffordable for
them it will be useless or a failure.
And in last stage post- purchase evaluation will occurs to let a customer find reasons to
support their purchase decision making. That is because satisfied customer will encourage
and force to stay and build close relationships with them as loyalty customers. And also sales
department of the bank need to in touch with those customers as they will make new future
purchase decisions with them.

2.3 Roles of sales force in marketing strategy
As any organization, Commercial bank has its own corporate objectives in order to achieve
their organizational vision and mission. In order to achieve the corporate objectives other
functional objectives should be achieved such as marketing objectives. And in order to attain
marketing objectives strategies are to be generated and implemented. Role of sales force
when generating, implementing and carrying out the marketing strategies are as follows.
 Analysis of current market- Sales force is the most proximate people to the
customers or market place. When conversing with a potential or existing
customers sales force are in position to gather information regarding the current
trends, competitors, customer feedbacks on current service and most importantly
the customers actual need. All above mentioned information can be utilized when
conducting a successful market audit.
 Sales forecasting- When structuring the marketing strategies of the Commercial
bank determination of future sales are important. Since the allocation of the
resources can only be done according to the forecast in order to achieve the set
marketing objectives efficiently.
 Selecting marketing strategies- Being the front of tactical marketing sales team
has a responsibility to consult the marketing team when preparing strategies. Since
they are the once who understand the customer requirement and whether the
strategies are realistic.
 Budgeting, implementation and control- Sales budgets should be prepared
according to the sales forecasts. And those forecasts should be achieved and
expenses should be within the budgets otherwise the total marketing strategy
might be a failure, by making less profit to the bank.

3.0 Task 2
3.1 Sales strategies to support corporate objectives
3.2 Recruitment and selection procedures in sales management
Sales people stand for the corporate image and determine whether a service or product can be
promoted well. In the long term, recruitment and selection of sales people is beneficial to any
companies’ sales management and bring the profit that they expected in the sales process.
According to the human resource plan of Commercial bank, current sales force will not be
sufficient when pursuing greater sales targets. Therefore current sales force should be
expanded by recruiting new sales personnel and regional managers.
Recruitment and selection of sales people is related to the development of the bank. Because
in highly competitive society if they don’t own an effective and highly qualified team of sales
people, they would be eliminated from the competition. This can be avoided from the sale of
their services and decisive force of the sale of services in the development of the bank. And
from that profit can be realized through successful sale of services and for that sales people
will help, especially from the best qualified sales people that bank hired.
Through this procedure bank can find qualified and appropriate personnel to the sales
position who can promote services better. So sales management in bank can choose and
recruit employees that are suitable to the sales position and meet their requirements.And also
even their competitors’ perform well in their sales plans like high advertising, use of more
distribution channels, etc. will not eliminate Commercial bank from the competition because
they are more relies on their sales people. And at the same time they are closely related to the
public and stand for developing outer image of the bank. So that’s why recruitment and
selection procedures are so much important in sales management.
Further to emphasize the importance of recruitment and selection, consider a few of the
problems associated with inadequate implementation,
1. Inadequate sales coverage and lack of customer follow-up
2. Increased training costs to overcome deficiencies
3. More supervisory problems
4. Higher turnover rates
5. Difficulty in establishing enduring relationships with customers

Like that clearly, sales force performance will suffer if recruitment and selection are poorly
executed. Other sales management functions become more troublesome when the sales
manager have bad hires. And the full costs of unsuccessful recruitment and selection are
probably impossible to estimate. Also when considering these things in this bank, actually
recruitment and selection are among the most challenging and important responsibilities of
sales management.