Sales Management: Strategies Customers Are Term Paper

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However, to save the customer time, managers and staff must put in extra time to discover what the customer might consider a problem. Sales staff must scan company Web sites, read corporate annual reports, and talk to competitors in the industry so they can get a feel for prospects' issues. Sales people should thus be rewarded not based on immediate returns and quick-profit producing sales but long-term client building results. Developing and executing such a problem-based sales approach can take longer htan traditional approaches that simply stress product quality. "Eighteen months ago, an opportunity that did not pan out after four to six weeks would have been labeled a low priority," but a "sales cycle of three to four months is now mainstream." It may take twice as many contacts to close a sale today and "surprisingly, both entrepreneurs and experts agree sellers can't always shortcut the process by just dropping the price. "The old method of selling by price is falling by the wayside...Organizations are willing to pay more if the product's value is evident. They won't pay a dollar for anything if they don't see the value," and the need for targeting long-term sales problems.(Hendricks, 2002, p.1)

Motivating the Staff on a Long-Term Basis

Things have changed in terms of motivating by commission salaries. "The good news about paying salespeople today is that you can peg a higher percentage of compensation to performance. Entrepreneurs today are having less trouble keeping good people and hiring new ones at lower base salaries than in years past. But they are also finding less justification for paying straight commissions for new orders. Instead, they're basing compensation on more exotic, harder-to-figure measures such as profit margin per order and customer satisfaction.The revised approaches do more than save money, although total sales pay may actually be shrinking from previously inflated levels. Most important, they make sure salespeople aren't making the wrong sales. Paying based on profit margin keeps sellers from cutting prices just to get an order. And basing pay on customer satisfaction means salespeople won't promise features and delivery dates the company can't provide. (Hendricks, 2002, p.2)

Incentive programs can be tricky beasts. What motivates one salesperson may completely discourage another." (McCall, 2001) but whether one uses cash, perks, or luxurious promotions, make sure to motivate the correct behavior. "Flextime, overtime and four-day weekends don't work as incentives in small companies," says one manager from a small magazine marketing firm, although she states they have been spectacularly sucessful in larger Fortune 500 companies. "You can't develop energy when employees aren't there when you need them." (McCall, 2001) but what is critical is that a sales person's long-term client cultivation, rather than making the occasional 'big killing' recieves the greatest reward, as this is what is ultimately most beneficial for the company's bottom line.

Works Cited

Gorelick, Dick. (2004) "The New Concept of Sales management." The American Printer. Accssed on Find Articles database on May 15, 2005 at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3254/is_6_233/ai_n6272086

Hendricks, Mark. (2002) "All Work & No Play: Time Management and Sales Techniques for Salespeople." Entreprener. Pp.1-2. Accssed on Find Articles database on May 15, 2005 at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DTI/is_8_30/ai_96631030

McCall, Kimberly. (2001) "What's the hook? Sales personel incentives?"

Entreprenuer. Accssed on Find Articles database on May 15, 2005 at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DTI/is_9_29/ai_79756095.....