SALES MANAGEMENT AT SOIL INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

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Sailing through Sales – Learning Sales Management at SOIL

28 Mar 2022
- admin
- Student Careers
I am immensely interested in sales and salesforce structure, and my research has led me to gain some interesting insights. I decided to put down a few key points for aspiring salespeople. It is critical for a salesperson or even a marketer to understand a few crucial processes and, more significantly, to remain updated on the changing environment that influences your decision and the company’s ROI.
1. If a business wants to sustain its position in the industry, it must change the composition of its sales force. In other words, organizations must change four elements over time: the function of the sales force and selling partners, the size of the sales force, the degree of specialization of the sales force, and how salespeople divide their time between different clients, products, and activities. These four criteria listed above have an impact on sales force performance, along with revenue, cost, and profitability.
2. According to an analysis I read recently, firms tend to modify their sales structures only when certain events, such as failure to fulfill objectives, a shift in competitors’ strategy, or mergers, compel them to do so.
3. These days, firms tend to go between the four stages more quickly than they earlier used to, which only reinforces the importance of having a flexible sales team, today more than ever.
Growth and Building on Success:

As a company grows, its product line expands, and its sales team is required to contact prospects from a wider range of markets. Sales managers are faced with two issues as a result of this: size and specialization.

At this stage, a salesperson must be able to grasp a variety of products, markets, and selling activities. As tasks become more difficult to do, salespeople are more inclined to drop the clients, products, and selling activities that are the most difficult to handle.

Some specialist sales teams concentrate on products, while others concentrate on the market and yet others on the customer segment. Some salespeople focus on acquiring new customers, while others focus on providing service to existing customers.

As a result, many businesses establish hybrid structures that comprise a mix of generalists, market product specialists, and activity specialists.

Salespeople may be required to use team-based selling strategies, which require coordination and teamwork. People who perform in a team environment are likely to be different from lone wolves who win in traditional sales environments.

Thank you to Prof AN Bhattacharya for teaching us about Sales management and how to incorporate real world practical learnings into our future sales growth. I appreciate how he uses tools like case study methodology and encourages us to read and analyse articles for better learning and more impactful growth.

Sambhav Jain
PGPM, Class of 2022