Sales and Sales Management

Description

Sales personnel deal with the market directly and personally. Throughout them, marketing becomes concrete and humanly meaningful. Other marketing people seldom see the customers that they influence. The people dealt with cover a wide range in both the employing and the client organizations in the complex effort to understand client needs, and to help shape the liaison activity to meet those needs.

Career Opportunities

Sales and sales management opportunities exist in a wide range of profit and nonprofit organizations, and in product and service organizations, including financial, insurance, consulting, and government. Commercial banking, for example, is a technical form of sales.

Industrial and commercial sales and sales management offer increasingly challenging and rewarding opportunities commonly involving systems selling and requiring broad management and, in some cases, technical training.

The wide range of product and market opportunities and variety of interpersonal situations faced by sales personnel indicate the need for carefully matching one's background, interests, technical skills and academic training with available career opportunities in sales and sales management. Training programs vary greatly inform and length, ranging from a few weeks to two years. Career paths in sales are not the same in all organizations, and need to be explored with each prospective employer.

Entry Level Positions

Trade Sales: These are positions with manufacturers or wholesalers representing those products to wholesalers or retailers. The products range from packaged grocery products to office supplies to clothing. Examples of companies employing this type of sales representative include Proctor & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, and Levi-Strauss. The sales representative has a specified number of accounts within a designated geographic area. The sales task is to visit the wholesaler or retailer, provide information about new products, close sales, expedite orders, and mediate complaints.

Missionary Sales: These are manufacturer's representatives who call upon retailers or decision makers to attempt to influence them to use the manufacturer's products. Missionary salespeople "preach the gospel" of their company's products, but do not close sales. The most common example is the drug pharmaceutical representative who calls upon physicians to persuade them to prescribe the company's brand of drugs. Producers of grocery products and other products found in retail sores often employ missionaries to visit the retail stores and to discuss the product with the retailer, set up displays, stock shelves, etc. The missionary has a specified number of accounts in a given geographic area. This is often an excellent introduction to sales work, because it does not require that the representative actually close sales.

Technical Selling: This is much like the type of selling in that the representative has specified accounts within a designated geographic area. These accounts are other businesses which use the product that the salesperson represents. This is different from trade selling, however, in that the products are more technical in nature. They require a certain knowledge and aptitude to be effectively represented. Examples include electronic equipment, bulk chemicals, building materials, and capital equipment such as machine tools. Companies which employ such representatives include IBM, Monsanto, and Warner-Swasey.

New Business Selling: Here, the salesperson does not have specified accounts nor a geographic territory. He or she is responsible for developing new business wherever possible. Examples include real estate, automobiles, life insurance, stocks and bonds, etc. Companies employing such salespeople include Caldwell Banker, automobile dealers such as Chevrolet and Nissan, and Aetna and Bankers Life insurance companies.

There are other types of sales jobs, such as retail sales, delivery routes (bread, beer, etc.) and handling customer orders by telephone. Most of these jobs are not filled by college graduates.

Positions For Graduate Degree Holders

Most holders of graduate degrees, particularly MBAs, do not aspire to sales positions. They want to be product or brand managers, advertising account executives, corporate planners, or marketing researchers. But they may be missing a good opportunity to join a company and acquire useful background for positions to which they aspire. Sales work, in any of the areas outlined for undergraduates above, can provide the entering MBA with a broad look at an organization's products, competitors, and the economic situation; also, as well as affording the MBA an opportunity to perform well and have that performance noted by top management. Selling is one area of managerial performance which depends in large measure upon individual initiative and effort. After a year or two in sales, many MBAs have made a record for themselves that enables them to move into another position. Some find, however, that moving up in sales management is much more challenging and rewarding than they had initially realized.

Requisite Personal Qualities

Personal selling, by definition, involves persuasive two-way communication with potential buyers. Thus, it is helpful to sales performance to enjoy people and to get on with them well. But, more is required.

The salesperson must know that products that he or she represents, as well as competing products. The basic sales task, then, is to understand the buyer's wants and desires, and to match these with the organization's products. Therefore, perhaps the most important single personal quality is the absolute conviction that the product can, in fact, help the buyer. People who believe in their products can effectively sell them.

It also helps to be highly motivated and well-organized because selling, more than most positions, requires individual initiative, unsupervised by managers. Further, in contrast to stereotype, the salesperson should be capable of full, careful, and accurate analysis in terms of both statistical performance measures and dollars and cents financial criteria of the advantages and disadvantages of a particular purchase by a given customer.

In short, it is often said that the salesperson needs empathy with others to understand their wants and desires. Ego drives to match those wants and desires to the organization's products, and personal efficiency is needed in order to complete these expeditiously. Of course, no human being scores highly on all of these qualities. The more an individual possesses of each of them, however, the more like that he or she will be a successful salesperson.

Academic Preparation

Every student must begin with the introductory marketing management course at the undergraduate or graduate levels. The sales management course is a must; and, a marketing strategy course is useful for all types of sales work. All interested students should take the marketing research course. Beyond that, the aspiring salesperson might select additional marketing courses that reflect special interest. Those interested in marketing to consumers, or marketing consumer goods to the trade, will want to take consumer behavior and advertising.

Particularly useful are courses that provide insight into the human condition: psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, etc. Analytical courses, such as cost accounting, computer science, and statistical analysis are increasingly helpful. Courses that aid in communications, e.g. speech, drama, and creative writing are valuable. Finally, courses that are related to a student's special interest should be selected: language courses, if one is interested in international marketing; engineering or physical science courses for those interested in technical selling, etc.