Sales Management: Recruitment Strategies in Automobile Industry

This report delves into the crucial aspects of sales management, particularly within the highly competitive automobile industry. It emphasizes the significance of effective recruitment strategies for sales representatives, who are vital for achieving organizational goals. The report outlines a recruitment plan that prioritizes candidates with strong communication skills, market awareness, and technical knowledge. It highlights the importance of assessing candidates' capabilities through simulation exercises and evaluating their understanding of consumer behavior. The report concludes that, in the automobile industry, companies must design efficient recruitment strategies to identify competent sales representatives who can significantly contribute to organizational success. It stresses the need for sales representatives to have comprehensive product knowledge, including technical specifications, to effectively engage with potential customers and address their needs.

SALES MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................................................3
Automobile industry..........................................................................................................3
Recruiting sales representatives.........................................................................................3
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................5

Introduction
The business world has been rapidly changing since the spread of globalisation and
every industry is now full of infinite number of foreign and domestic rivals. In such a
competitive scenario, business organisations are largely relying upon their human
resources to achieve market competencies.
Sales personnel or the employees working in the sales department are one of the
most important resources that can help an organisation in achieving greater market
success. The competencies required for sales person to contribute more towards the
success of an organisation are also undergoing a change with the changing
business environment. The sales executives are now required to extensively
communicate with the customers in order to understand their needs and demands,
which allows them to achieve higher sale targets. Thus, with the increase in market
competition, the competencies required for the human resources are also changing.
Automobile industry
Automobile industry is one of the largest and the most competitive industries in the
global business world. The industry is one of the greatest contributor towards the
GDP of a number of economies and is expected to grow at a very high rate in the
upcoming years. Automobile industry is also very competitive for the sales
representatives working in it because for every product, there are possibly more than
5-10 rival products (Pandya, 2012). Further, the customers also make careful
decisions because of the involvement of large investment, which makes it harder for
the sales representatives to convince them.
Recruiting sales representatives
Recruitment is a process of identifying job vacancies, inviting applications for the
vacancies identified and selecting the right fit from the applications received.
Recruiting sales representatives in any industry is a difficult task because the
demand for sales staff is always high but a lot of candidates do not prefer sales
related jobs. On the other hand, business organisations too require people who are
well qualified and have some experience in the past while working in the sales field.

Therefore, recruitment of sales representatives is a dubious task in the automobile
industry. A recruitment plan for recruiting sales representatives is given below:
First of all, to ensure efficiency of the sales department, it is must that the sales
representatives have efficient communication skills that can allow them to
communicate with the customer in the language that they prefer. They should be
able to communicate with the customers in such a way that they are able to extract a
great deal of knowledge, such as needs, demands, intent to make a purchase
decision, expectations, etc. from the conversation itself (Itani, et al., 2017). The
sales representatives should have sufficient knowledge about consumer buying
behaviour so that they can analyse the information that the customers unintentionally
share through their conversation. Therefore, looking for people who have good
communication skills and sufficient knowledge about the buyer behaviour in the
automobile industry can help in setting up a competitive sales staff.
Secondly, to increase the overall effectiveness of the organisation on the whole, it is
important to recruit sales representatives that have a great deal of knowledge about
the market and the products that the rival companies are offering. Sales
representatives should be aware about the market conditions so that they can have
a healthy communication with the customers and inform them about the market
scenario (Shorr, 2013). They should also be aware about the offers that their rivals
are offering to the customers so that they can compete with them. Having extensive
market information provides the sales representatives with an upper hand in the
negotiation. Therefore, the human resource managers should definitely test the
market awareness of the candidates who apply for the job position of a sales
representative (Barnett & Robinson, 2013).
Thirdly, the human resource managers should ensure that they adequately test the
capabilities of the candidates, rather than stressing more upon their past
performances. The human resource managers can include simulation exercises in
the recruitment process where they can test the capabilities of the applicants. The
simulation exercises can be designed in such a way that the applicants are required
to either sell a random product that the interviewers offer to them or have to talk
about a fictitious company (Helmrich, 2014). The performance of the applicant can

then be used to identify certain important competencies, such as the ability to
communicate, the ability to handle pressure, presentation abilities and the ability to
be honest during customer dealing, which is one of the most important thing that a
sales representative should possess.
Fourthly, it might not cross the mind of a number of people but testing the technical
skills and knowledge of the applicants is also important to establish an effective
sales representative team. For a sales representative to perform well in the
automobile industry, it is important for him or her to have complete knowledge about
the products. For example, a sales representative being appointed for selling cars in
the market should be aware about all the technical specifications of a car in general.
Sales representatives should be aware about engine specifications, safety features,
etc. if they want to achieve the performance objectives. Thus, the human resource
managers should make sure that the person they are hiring has sufficient technical
knowledge so that he or she can completely explain the minutest details of the
product to the potential customers (Rotenberg, 2014).
Conclusion
Recruiting sales representatives is not an easy task as the overall market success of
a company is largely dependent on the competencies and capabilities of its sales
department. Moreover, in an industry like the automobile industry, which is one of the
most competitive industries, the dependency of the companies on their sales staff to
achieve the performance objectives or the sales target increases even more.
Therefore, it is important for the companies operating in the automobile sector to
design efficient recruitment strategies that can help them in identifying competent
sales representatives, who can make significant contributions towards the
achievement of organisational goals and objectives.

References
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Shorr, B., 2013. 5 Offbeat Ways To Find Great Sales Reps. [Online]
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find-great-sales-reps/#334eb3e6122b[Accessed 11 August 2017].
Rotenberg, Z., 2014. Top 14 Inside Sales Skills Every Sales Rep Must Master.
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