Sales Management: Strategies, Structures, and Techniques for Vodafone

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of sales management principles, structures, and techniques, specifically tailored for Vodafone. It begins by defining sales management and outlining key principles like sales planning, reporting, and methods, with examples relevant to Vodafone's operations. The report explores the variations in sales management approaches between B2C and B2B contexts, examining how Vodafone caters to both consumer and business customers. It then delves into sales structures, including direct selling and selling through others, evaluating their significance and implementation in relation to product, geography, and market considerations. Furthermore, the report analyzes successful selling techniques, including consultative and traditional methods, and discusses the development of sales strategies and financing to enhance profitability within Vodafone. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and recommendations for optimizing Vodafone's sales management practices.

Sales Management

Executive Summary
Evolution of e-commerce and globalisation have changes the way business and customers
interacts with each other and has lead the business firms to adapt to these changes through
brining necessary amendments in the selling process. Below mentioned report is to review and
adapt to the sales management approach for an organisation with regards to the change in culture
and trends in the buying habits of consumers. Further mentioned report includes the principles of
sales management, evaluation of how sales structure are organised and analyse the principles of
successful selling.

Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Principles of Sales management and consumer/business buying behaviour...................................1
Concept of Sales Management...............................................................................................1
Key principles of Sales management.....................................................................................1
How sales management principles varies from B2C and B2B...............................................4
Sales structures and selling though others.......................................................................................6
Concept of Sales structures in Vodafone................................................................................6
Types of sales structure....................................................................................................................6
Concept of direct selling and selling through others in Vodafone.........................................7
Significance of selling through others....................................................................................8
Critical evaluation of implementation of the sales structures in relation with Product,
Geography and Market...........................................................................................................9
Advantages and importance of selling through others.........................................................11
Key Principles and techniques of successful selling......................................................................12
Successful selling.................................................................................................................12
key principles of successful selling that contribute to building and managing a successful
Customer...............................................................................................................................12
Techniques for effective selling...........................................................................................13
Application and analysis of effective selling principles and technique to Vodafone...........14
Developing sales strategies and financing successful selling........................................................14
Sales strategy along with the examples................................................................................14
Use of terms of payment to enhance the profitability inn Vodafone...................................16
Sales management account through product sales or customer based structure to enhance the
sales and profitability of Vodafone......................................................................................17
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................17
References:.....................................................................................................................................19

Books and Journals...............................................................................................................19

Introduction
Sales management can be defined as the process of acquiring a sales force, management of the
sales operation and applying the sales techniques with the aim of maximising the sales of a
business firm and generated adequate profit for the survival of business. Sales management
process is effective in boosting up the declining sales and revenue of the company no matter
what type of organisation or industry in which they operate. Apart from raising the sales revenue,
sales management also allows company to keep up the pace with the changing trends and rising
competition in the market (Wittenburg and et. al., 2019). Vodafone Group Plc, headquartered at
Newbury was founded was back in 1991 which a multinational telecommunication company
majorly operates in Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania. British Multinational firm provides
services like fixed line telephone, mobile services, digital television, internet of things, IPTV and
broadband etc, to majorly 22 countries and partner network services in 48 countries across globe.
Further report covers the understanding of principles of sales management, merits of distinct
sales structure and importance of selling through others in the context of Vodafone. Furthermore,
it has been demonstrated the understanding of finance of selling and analyse the principles of
selling.
Principles of Sales management and consumer/business buying behaviour
Concept of Sales Management
Sales management referred to as a business discipline which is concerned with administration of
sales operation of the company along with planning, controlling and implementation of sales
techniques into sales programmes. Sales managers in the company are responsible for planning,
recruiting, training, organising and supervising the workforce, defining objectives for the team,
controlling the sales process and ensure that final results are met with the firm’s vision and
objective (Zhou and et. al., 2019). It is regarded as the important function of each business as net
sales through selling of company’s offerings and net profit results from the sales are crucial for
leading the firm ahead and for its continuous survival.
Key principles of Sales management
In the context of Vodafone, Sales management is defined as the process of administrating
the sales personnel and resources involved in the selling process of the company. The prime role
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of sales manager is to plan, implement and control the sales programmes along with hiring,
training and managing, motivating and evaluating the performance of sales force with the goal of
maximising the efficiency and increasing the sales of Vodafone. Below mentioned are the key
principles used by Vodafone to boost up their sales are:
Sales planning: Sales planning process is crucial for the success of organisation in achieving
sales targets as it is the key function of sales management which involves forecasting of sales,
demand management, defining profit based sales targets and execution steps of a sales plan
(Ben-Daya, Hassini and Bahroun, 2019). Sales planning help Vodafone in organising the
activities that need to be carried out to achieve the long term objectives of business. There are
several steps which is involved in the sales planning process which is as mentioned below:
 Analyse: This stage is crucial for Vodafone as at this company identified its position in
the relevant market, defined customers, sources of revenue, expectations of sales from
other sources and analysis of market trends, technology, competition etc. Vodafone is a
leading multinational company operating majorly in Asia, Europe, Oceania and Africa.
Most of the sales of Vodafone comes from the B2C market segment where customers are
using mobile and internet services of Vodafone since ages. Vodafone is now planning to
generate the revenue from B2C customer segment which includes IT firms, government
institutions, and corporate customers.
 Setting goals: While setting out a goal for increasing the sales revenue, Vodafone must
prepare goals which are easily attainable and should be relevant to the long term vision
and mission of the company (Xin, 2021). In order to make a short term goals, Vodafone
may use the parameter of SMART which is an acronym for specific, measurable,
attainable, and relevant and time bound. This criteria will help Vodafone in making target
oriented objectives.
 Develop plan: After setting out the short term goals for increasing the sales revenue of
Vodafone, sales manager crafts out the several strategies and plan which will assist the
company during the entire sales programmes. Not only this, it is essential to take into
account several risk factors such as rising competition, attractive low tariff offers by
rivalry companies, change in the buying trends etc. Apart from this, there must be action
plan which is called tactics to support and implement the strategies.
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 Execute: After analysing all the factors of risk and optimum strategies to meet the
desired objective, nest step is to implement the form plans with the help of tactics and
tools. Vodafone prepares and trains the sales force with the desire to work towards the
common goal and attainment of objective and purpose set at stage two (Mullen PhD,
Stuart and Thomas, 2020). Sales manager evaluate the performance level of each
employee and compares the actual result with the desired one to improve the level of
performance. Evaluate and review planning process: At this stage, sales manager evaluates the
performance level of performance of a plan and analyse the results through comparing
with the desired outcomes. Vodafone conducts, weekly meeting to get a review on the
progress of the plans and to take necessary measures in case of any deviations. Company
may set the benchmarks and measure the performance with the set benchmark to produce
a desired result.
Sales reporting: Sales reporting is another key function of the sales management which is
essential in keeping the sales records of the company over a period of time to measure the
performance of sales operation. It the process of keeping track of all the activities in the sales
process and analysing of data with the aim of determining where company lies presently and
necessary steps to be taken with the aim of improving the performance level of company. Sales
reporting enable sales manager of Vodafone to understand and identify the effects of current
efforts which is driving the sales of the company with the view of keeping them up as the market
grows (Cawley and et. al., 2019). It also gives the insight to manager to take necessary measures
to improve the performance of company either recruiting more sales force or reallocating job
duties.
Vodafone majorly deals in offering mobile and internet services to the customer and
business firms across all over the worlds. In order to have and maintain successful sales
reporting, company makes use of sales call report. These sales reports are presented by the sales
representative of Vodafone who sells services to the customer directly and over phone calls. In
these reports sales representatives highlight the number of calls made and how many of them
were converted into potential leads. It reveals few of basic information such as to who call was
made, how well customer interacted, what went wrong or well, what made the customer to
accept and refuse their services. These information helps the sales manager to determine how
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well sales representative were prepared and does they were able to provide valuable insight and
services to the customer. On the basis of daily sales cal report company identifies the factors that
drive positive sales and takes necessary measures in case of negative sales figure (Mgiba, 2019).
Sales methods: Selling methods are those techniques which are applied by Vodafone into
their sales process and operations with the aim of increasing the sales revenue. These selling
techniques or methods are essential for the sales manager to be able to adopt when sales
representatives are with the prospects customers over phone or face to face to convert them
into the potential customers. There are several methods used in the industry such as SNAP
selling, SPIN selling, Conceptual selling, transactional and product oriented. However
amongst other there are three key types of selling techniques in marketing which is
consultative, compelling and high octane selling. Below mentioned are there implications in
Vodafone:
 Consultative selling: One of the widely used selling methods in Vodafone is consultative
selling which is more focused on the prospect not over the sales. Under consultative
technique sales representative prioritise the relationship with the prospect and encourage
open dialogue with the aim of identifying the needs of customer and providing them best
suitable solution (Park and et. al., 2020). This methods helps the sales representative to
build trust and confidence with the customer and understand the challenge faced by them
through empathy so that they can get more compelling and effective solutions.
 Traditional or compelling selling: Another method used by Vodafone to increase the
sales through traditional methods of selling. As the name suggests, sales
representative reaches to the prospect customer, convincing and persuading them to
buy the products and services of Vodafone. Here the idea behind is to foster the sales
figure of a company through pressure filled process of sales irrespective of the
customer’s desire to buy the product.
How sales management principles varies from B2C and B2B
Business to business is a concept used to define the relationship between the buyers and sellers
of a product. B2B is a term which applicable for the business customers of Vodafone who are
using their mobile and internet services in order to satisfy their needs and wants. For instance
there are corporate offices that make the use of mobile, telephone and broadband connections of
their office staff and business operations (Fam, Brito and et. al., 2019). Furthermore use of
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internet enabled technology have changes the way of doing business for which several hotels,
corporate offices and multinational firms are integrating internet based technology into their
business operations. While targeting business customer segment, the target market is generally a
niche market with their specified needs and problems. For instance, business customer may
demand for the installation of Wifi, landlines and mobile phones for the employees, internet of
things at business operations etc.
While offering services to the business customers, Vodafone gets interacts with the multiple
customers with distinct desires and wishes which is going to impact on sales management
process (TAN, CHANDUKALA and REDDY, 2021). Services offered to the business customers
are personalised and designed especially with the objective of meeting their needs and demands.
Sales cycle involved in the B2B customer segment is large and based on the concept of building
personal and long term relationship.
On the other hand, business to customer is used to describe the relationship between the
company and individual customer. Unlike B2B customer segment, Vodafone laid emphasis over
profit making rather than building personal relationship, however company wants to retain the
potential customer through after sales services and aspire to serve the needs of their potential
customer in a innovative way (Zheng and et. al., 2020). Buying process in B2C customer
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segment involves only one step where actual sales in closes at completion of buying and selling
process. Individuals are emotionally driven who get ready to buy the product with the aim of
satisfying their personal needs and wants whereas in B2B customers take much longer way to
decide on making actual purchase (Qin, Shao and Jiang, 2020). Unlike B2B customer segment,
individual customer does not likely to indulge in the company’s reputation and story rather they
want to become a loyal customer while receiving exceptional quality of services. Therefore, it
has been concluded that there is several variation in the buying decision of customer and
business as they related to the sales planning, sales reporting and sales methods, one of the key
principles of sales management.
Sales structures and selling though others
Concept of Sales structures in Vodafone
A sales structure is basically a blueprint of the sales team. The concept of sales structure is a
common method by which the sales department of an organisation develops and deliver the
whole process of sales which facilities the organisation to achieve its sales target in the
competitive business environment (Ingram and et. al., 2019). The sales structure of a Vodafone
depends on a size and scope but mainly there are the two methods of sales structure direct selling
and selling through others. The sales structure has developed some of the methods by which an
Vodafone is able to develop the business using the features like cold calling, handing inbound
sales, lead generation, sales and business development etc. In Vodafone the sales structure is
more based on the geographical regions as company operates in 150 countries by which
company reduce the cost and try to increase its sales with the particular sales team in growing
countries.
Types of sales structure
There are different types of sales structure
Functional Structure
The functional structure of the sales organisational structure mainly aims on the specialisation
among the marketing team its means the purpose of functional sales structure is to fulfil specific
task related to the sales which is assigned to the every individual according to the team on the
basis of their interest, specialties and other core factors. Vodafone the function sales structure is
run by sales team which is highly efficient but company do face problems there is the person
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specialised in the functional sales task and also the people are coordinator in the sales team that
helps organisation that Vodafone to run their functional sales structure efficiently their handling
the demands of the clients and customers over different accounts and also to handle the
multilingual accounts.
Geographic Structure
The geographic sales structure in a simple meaning refers to the sales team that run their sales
structure on the basis of the location. The sales team of Vodafone has break down there sale
structure on the basis of different territorial regions that helps them easily cover the geographical
location of their customers in an organised manner because if company does not divides its a
structure on the basis of location they make more all over the place there adding extra cost over a
time so it helps it is cost friendly. Also it helps of Vodafone to continuously grow the particular
area that bi caring for one region. This makes customer recognised brand easily and also
increases the customer loyalty for the Vodafone thereby creating more revenue for the better
customer relation in the future
Figure 1: Sales structure of Vodafone, 2017
(Source: Sales structure of Vodafone, 2017)
Concept of direct selling and selling through others in Vodafone
Direct selling
Direct selling is a non retail setting of selling the product in which the companies independently
sell their products and services directly to their consumers (Thaichon and et. al., 2018). Direct
selling in selling their products face to face without any mediator to their consumers which
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mainly happens through selling at home workplace or through companies online website. The
advantage of the direct selling to the Vodafone is the high profitability through the potential
consumers with the approach of warm calling. It also helps the Vodafone to capture and
understand the customer’s reaction and reviews towards the service and product thereby making
needful changes.
Selling through others
In selling through others the sales of organisation is done by some intermediaries who represent
the company products and services through different distribution channel or on the retail stores.
The Vodafone’s most of business growth and sales is via B2B buyers which mean companies
selling method is mostly through others by which company gains the advantage of focusing more
on developing new products rather than focusing on both sales and development. The distributors
like Amazon, eBay are the examples for the selling through others (Haag and Sandberg, 2020).
Vodafone mobile phones, broadband, TV are the products that the consumers buy from the
retailers or the distributors which is the example of selling through others method of Vodafone.
Hence, this method provides the benefit to the Vodafone as the company does not has to worry
about storing the much stock of products and also somewhere the company is able to build strong
relationship with retailers that help them in knowing the other competitors sales and product line
features and consumers true perspective (Lin, 2020).
Significance of selling through others
Selling through others have significantly gain the attention the manufacturers are selling
their products and services through the other wholesalers retailers of the distributors in order to
reach more customers and at different locations. The most important and beneficial part of
selling through others is direct advertising and promotion to the end users as every organisation
requires and effective advertising and promotions for that products and services that can connect
to the customers therefore in selling through others the distributors promote the products directly
to the customers and also they are fond of keeping stock and sell product to their customers. For
multinational organisations like Vodafone products and services are required to reach
widespread customer base all across the globe for which selling through other is a most strongest
form of selling by which you the products and services and easily approachable to the customers
and also company can expand their operations but focus in less on the distribution strategy also
conserving their own resources.
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