- Sales Force Management (SFM) is a sub-system of marketing management. It is Sales Management that translates the marketing plan into marketing performance. That is why sales force management is sometimes described as the muscle behind the marketing management. Actually sales force management does much more than serving as the muscle behind marketing management.
- Sales managers in modern organization are required to be customer-oriented and profit-directed and perform several tasks besides setting and achieving personal selling goals of the firm. Let us understand briefly the sales force management, tasks involved in the sales force management. Sales managers in modern organization are required to be customer- oriented and profit-directed and perform several tasks besides setting and achieving personal selling goals of the firm.
| - In many firms, the sales force is the only group specifically charged with generating sales revenues. Field sales people efforts are the firm’s critical persuasive component. Some sales forces are huge. In India, two dozen life insurance firms employ more than 20 lakh agents to sell their products; GE, IBM, Pfizer each employ tens of thousands of salespeople around the world.
- In B2B marketing, the field sales force has always been critical; salespeople typically introduce products/services directly to end users. Business customers increasingly want vendors to possess real expertise in their specific industries/functions.
- They expect salespeople to help solve business problems, not just sell widgets. In turn, many B2B vendors have expanded product lines, added solutions specialists to help knit together disparate products/services into integrated offers.
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