Sales are the fundamental and the most important activity of any business. The sales team is responsible for the revenue and the revenue brings in the Cash – the lifeline of the business. Without sales and the revenue from it, there is no reason for any business to exist. So sales management has always been given the due importance it deserved.
On a broad level, sales management means managing all the following – sales team, sales performance, sales planning, revenue, collection, order, outstanding, recruitment, training, rewarding, prospects, leads, sales funnel, customers, escalation, pipeline, territory, time, sales promotions, partners, dealers, distributors, travel plan, back-office communication and so on.
Each one of the activities mentioned above is equally important, but depending on the size of the organization some of the activities are clubbed together. Nevertheless, the core activity of any sales gears TV team remains the same – revenue responsibility. Let us review some of the basic sales management activities – ctivitiesales team management, sales planning, collection, and outstanding management.
Sales Team Management
Managing the sales team properly, however small or big they may play a critical role in their performance. Depending on the size and the policies, most of the organizations have a well-defined sales hierarchy – there will be a National Sales Manager or National Sales Head, reporting to management, who will be responsible for the entire sales activity of the company.
Under Sales Head, you will have a hierarchy of managers and team – Zonal Sales Managers (ZSM), Regional Sales Managers (RSM), Area Sales Managers (ASM) and Territory Sales Managers (TSM). Under TSM’s there may be Sales Executives/Sales Trainees. Each of the managers will be responsible for a minimum of two to 10 or more people reporting to him directly. Some of the managers might be managing the sales team of the partners or dealers of the company.
Managing the salesmen is one of the difficult tasks of any manager – the salesmen community will be vulnerable and insecure on one day and on a different day they will be on a high (obviously after a big win). Since they have to handle a large number of rejections, naturally they will be in a defensive mindset, finding fault with almost anything other than their performance – it is important to keep them in control.
Any sales manager’s main task will be to keep his team motivated, focused, disciplined, informed, engaged and at the same time aligned with the company’s policies. The salesmen should be aware of his targets, plan, ways, and means to achieve his target, have good knowledge of the product, price and policies, should report diligently, etc. The manager should be able to assess his salesman properly – improve on his strengths, correct his weakness, be firm on deviations, generally guide and mentor him to achieve his goals.
A manager should talk to his teammates almost two times daily (especially if the team is geographically distributed) and ensure that the team is disciplined and focused. Ultimately they have to win orders and bring in revenues for the benefit of the company and themselves. As the salesman’s compensation include that of commission/incentive/bonus – which in turn is directly related to their performance – sales managers must ensure that all their team members earn incentives/commission.
Sales Planning
Planning is important for any business activity and sales are not an exception for the same. Sales planning gets the added importance because of the direct impact it has on the other activities of the company. Based on the sales and revenue projections, the cash flow is estimated, the production plan is done, purchases are planned, marketing expenses are budgeted, advertisement expenses are planned, recruitments are planned – so much dependency is there on a proper sales plan.
An aggressive sales plan will result in excess production and a conservative sales plan will result in lost sales. Sales plans are done carefully by taking various factors into account – past years performance, market demand and supply, existing market share, expected growth, existing production capacity, expansion plans, change in consumption patterns and so on.
Usually, the sales plan is done for a financial year. Either the plan is done for the organization as a whole and apportioned to the respective zones/regions depending on their scope or the plans are received from the respective areas ground-up and the total plan is arrived at. Whichever way it is done, it is important that the plan and the target are communicated to the entire sales team and it has the concurrence of them.
The plan should include the target for the new revenue, repeat revenue, pending collections, new customer acquisitions, new partner acquisitions, marketing plans, travel plans, etc. The yearly plan is split-up into quarterly plans and the quarterly plans into monthly plans.
Monthly sales review meetings are done to review the performance vs target and to take the appropriate actions. If the achievement is on par or more, the plan has to review whether the planning has been done conservatively. If the achievement is less, the percentage difference is found out and the plans for improving the same are discussed.
Collection And Outstanding Management
After planning, comes the execution. Along with the other sales activities, the prime focus of a sales manager has to be on collection – both on the new order revenues and also on the pending collections.
Calls are made, prospects are met, hot leads are filtered and new orders are won. Then comes the collection. Depending on the payment terms, the collection from the customer is done and is deposited in the relevant account. Often, the sales team closes a new order by booking the order and getting an advance click here Pubg pc. The sales process is not completed 100% if the revenue for the new order won is not collected from the customer.
The pending collections have to be on manageable levels – any receivables more than 90 days are on the critical path and it has to be followed closely along with the respective sales manager and the accounts team to the closure. Policies should be there to encourage salesmen to have low outstandings.
