In the course of offering Products a business will give all it takes to outgrown competition. This is made possible by producing the exceptional products or using state of the art facilities. This implied that to satisfy the customers a business needs to evaluate if its sales have grown or decline and identify the factors that are responsible for such. This among others will enable a business have focus and know where it is heading to.
UNDERSTANDING SALES
Sales are amount of goods and services offered or rendered by a business inorder to satisfy customers needs. Sales is one of the most important variable which contribute to business growth and value creation.
BASIC SELLING OBLIGATIONS
• Finding People Searching for Products/Services: To improve sales activities, a business needs to dedicate time and resources towards attracting customers. Locating Prospective buyers may require a business to dedicate considerable time in generating leads by engaging in activities via developing ads to reach new prospects, sending direct mails, participating in trade shows, attending networking events, joining forums involving the target market and using social media forums.
• Changing Possibilities into Customers: Upon locating Prospective buyers the next task is to convert prospects into first time customers and subsequently making them repeat customers. To consolidate its market position a business needs to transform its customers to client people; to whom it may give premium treatment. Having converted prospects into repeat customers, a business should solidify its business-customer relationship by signing them into programs that may be beneficial to the business and thereafter making them advocates.
• Retaining Customer Delight: Satisfaction is a person’s feeling of contentment as a result of consuming a product or benefiting from a service. In following up to know the extend a customer have been treated, a business may initiate different methods to ensure proper things are put in placed so that factors that shape satisfaction can be understood and necessary changes affecting operations can be made. By having a highly satisfied customer also indicates that the customer stays loyal to a company’s product, talks favorable about the company and its products, pays little or no attention to competing brands and becomes less sensitive to the company’s price offers.
• Forecasting Income: Sales is forecasted by breaking down projected sales figures into sales territories and customer groups. The figures obtained from sales forecast are usually used for setting up of budget for sales force operations, sales promotion budgets and allocating the projected sales figures over the market area being served. Some interesting facts about forecasting sales is that; sales forecast aid a business in financial planning by; projecting cashflow, scheduling production runs, timing purchases, controlling inventories and establishing cost standards for accounting control.
BENCHMARK FOR SALES LEVEL
• Breakeven Sales Level: At breakeven sales level the business sales level will cover fixed cost without any thing left as profit.
• Target Point Sales Level: At target point sales level the business sales level will cover fixed cost and what remains will be the profit.
• Target Return on Sales Level: At target return on sales level the business sales level will cover fixed cost and what remains will be the profit. To determine the return on sales of a business the amount of profit will be divided by sales.
• Shut Down Sales Level: At shut down sales level the business will cover its fixed cost but will have no amount of profit left. The shut down position also indicate that; if sales is above the shut down level a business may make profit or loss but the business may likely cover its overhead cost. In another situation being below the shut down level may indicate how a business will experience cash drain.
MOTIVATING SALESMEN
• Quota System: A business may establish quotas on sales volume, number of calls and number of new accounts.
• Sales Contests: A business may run sales Contests by offering cash or non-cash prices. Such contest should be organize in such a way that it will stimulate weaker salesmen becoming winners.
• Conferences and Conventions: salesmen looking forward to sharpen their skills may attend conferences and conventions out of their daily schedules for the purpose of eliciting useful information on: products, sales techniques, management view points and expectations.
• Communication from Management: In order to inspire the sales team a formal communication may be written by the management transmitting specific and practical suggestions.
• Training and Development: Newly employed salesmen need to be train before given any responsibility. By Training the newly employed salesmen, they should be impacted with sound knowledge about products and customers. While the experience salesmen should be retrain to handle new products or new customers. A good training program should be able to inculcates: enthusiasm, positive attitude towards selling and sound ethical standards.
Every business journey starts from idea generation and ends at maturity stage. With dedicated efforts towards customer satisfaction a business gives priority in increasing its sales and profitability. For a business to attain a superior position in the market and outweighs competition, it is imperative to execute sales tasks, figure out sales levels and motivates the sales team.
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