Sales Management: Operational Strategies for Performance Report

This report delves into the multifaceted world of sales management, emphasizing the pivotal role of sales managers in driving revenue and fostering high-performing sales teams. It explores key aspects such as sales force organization, resource allocation, and the importance of aligning sales strategies with marketing objectives. The report highlights the significance of effective recruitment, focusing on identifying personal characteristics and traits conducive to sales success. It also underscores the necessity of consistent sales training, the development of interactive training programs, and the alignment of training methods with business goals. Furthermore, the report emphasizes the critical role of motivation, including establishing goals, building trust, creating a culture of recognition, and leveraging individual strengths. The report also examines the importance of ethical sales practices, highlighting the impact of ethical behavior on customer relationships and brand loyalty, and the consequences of unethical practices. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of adapting sales management strategies to unique corporate environments and objectives.

Running Head: SALES MANAGEMENT 0
OPERATIONAL SALES
MANAGEMENT

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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

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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

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managers need to support and reinforce sales training or it will not lead in any optimal
results. With the creation of interactive training and by analysing current capability of the
employee to sell products, sales manager can fill the gap in performance. Sales manager can
design and develop a series of training workshops that will develop the skills and knowledge
in the sales person that they are needed to sell more effectively. No matter the experience
level of each sales person, sales person need to engage him or her in the proper training
programme immediately.
Source: (Pappas and Flaherty, 2008)
In an effective sales training programme, sales manager can improve performance of sales
people in various ways. For framing an effective training plan, sales manager need to align
sales training methods with the business strategy, goals and needs (Zoltners, Sinha and
Lorimer, 2008). This will help both organization and sales managers to save precious time,
efforts and energy. In next step, sales manager need to then prepare a blueprint plan for each

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and every employee so that with the general training programme, a specific focus can also be
embedded to improve that area of employee where there is lack of skills. For example, if a
sales person is good in communication skills but lacking in closing the deal, manager can
focus on that aspect (Hughes, Le Bon and Rapp, 2013). Therefore, by implementing
necessary training, sales manager can drive employee or sales people to the organizational
objectives or goals. This will not only create a value for the respective organization but also
gives them a competitive advantage in the market.
In addition, for raising the sales performance and productivity, sales manager also need to
focus on motivation from the bottom line as it is said that a motivated sales team is an
effective sales team. For building an effective motivated sales force, sales manager need to
first establish a set of goals as if the employee did not know what to aspire, achieving
something will not be easy. It did not just about sales quotas as different sales people
motivated in different ways (Miao, Evans and Shaoming, 2007). While quotas may be work
for some individual but a contest or personal goal may be a better choice for others.
Therefore, Sales manager need to work with each individual salesperson to find out what will
work best for them. They also need to create a “sense of purpose” as it will inspire sales
people to work harder at their jobs. Moreover, the foundation of motivation is trust and so
sales manager need to win employee trust. This will create a positive environment where
employees are feel appreciated and engaged and this will inspire their loyalty towards the
organization.
In the process of motivation, sales manager also need to focus on creating a culture of
recognition. Commission does not always motivate every employee as some of them want to
be a recognized individual in front of all of their peers. That praise and recognition motivated
them to not only work harder but also work together. This process is also called as Intrinsic
Motivation. It does not involve working on activities for the sake of an external reward;
rather, it involves the feeling of inner pleasure in the activity itself (Miao, Evans and
Shaoming, 2007). There are many factors that encourage intrinsic motivation. For example,
cooperation, curiosity, competition and control,
In last, Sales manager can motivate their sales personnel by recognizing individual strengths
and skills as this will build a balanced team in an organization. If the sales manager leverage
diversity of your team members and identify which characteristics or skills is affecting them

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in reaching to the targeted goal, can empower to improve them and thus ensure team
members to respect one another.
It is assumed that salespeople enhance the value delivered to the customers by establishing
cooperative relationships (Agnihotri, Kothandaraman, Kashyap and Singh, 2012). These
relationships cannot be perceived if the sales person acts in an unethical manner. Ethics, as
the branch of moral philosophy deals with moral judgment, standards and rule of conduct
governing in individual and societies and determining what is wrong or right. Ethical
behaviour in the sales relationships results on the part of salesperson in encouraging welfare
of the customer and this makes it widely recognised societal norms.
It is ascertained that salespeople who act in an ethical manner are factual in their
communication and which stimulate customer to purchase the product, as they believe it will
definitely benefit them. Similarly, ethical sales person eschew behaviours such as lying about
availability of product, selling of products and services that cannot be reuse or resold.
Therefore, learning of ethical practices helps salesperson to not provide misleading
information to the customer. This praise and increase the goodwill of an organization in the
whole industry and market and a company reputation plays an important role at the beginning
of relationships.
Although the business enterprise set some rules for their sales person to obey, a number of
conditions surrounding sale positions give an opportunity for ethics to be negotiated. The key
to gain customer loyalty is the ethical selling. It is essential to develop and maintain trust with
consumers, which will lead to bringing repeat business and increased profitability (Steward,
Walker, Hutt and Kumar, 2010).
It is very important for an organization and sales manager to stop unethical sales practice as it
can damage a brand or lead to unfaithful customers. Moreover, employing unethical practices
during the sales process can also make the deal close with prospective customers or up-sell a
current customer. Some customers have a long-term commitment towards an organization,
and due to one sales person unethical behaviour, organization can lose loyal customers and
this will be directly beneficial to the competitor enterprise as customer definitely switches to
another side. Therefore, sales manager need to focus on various ethical aspects connected to
the organization so as to raise sales quota and performance of sales person.
Sales representative should always do what is best for the customers and organization
(Homburg, Muller and Klarmann, 2011). However, when it comes to difficult decisions such

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as risking the loss of sale by being honest or making excuses for late delivery, sales
representatives may avoid making the ethical decisions unless they have no choice but to do
so. From long terms perspectives, these decisions made by them will enhance customer brand
loyalty towards the organization and thus will be proved profitable for the business
enterprise.
In last, every personality is different in terms of goals, talent, skills and experience. Even
every situation is different. There will never be same corporate environment with identical
objectives, policies or product. The sales manager needs to focus on dynamic and changing
business environment so as to influence sales people in an effective way. There will be
always some risks like unethical behaviour of employees or rejection of the sales quota but
sales managers need to deal with it for achieving the organization objectives.

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