In the final project for the Sales Operations/Management Specialization, learners will be asked to apply the knowledge they have obtained by performing a critical analysis of a real-world business. Learners are to select a business that has a sales function/operation. The learners are to identify the manager responsible for the sales function (typically called a Sales Manager) and interview this person on the sales management practices at this firm.
Q&A Week 3
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从本节课中
Overall Sales Function & Reporting Structure
教学方
Emily C. Tanner, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Marketing
Suzanne C. Bal
Teaching Assistant Professor, Marketing
Michael F. Walsh, Ph.D.
Department Chair & Associate Professor of Marketing
[MUSIC]
Gosh, there's so many things that they kind of come to mind.
Resilience, is really important in sales.
It is unfortunate reality, that sales people must deal with and
confront with rejection.
Not everybody is going to buy your product.
And being able to deal with that and
to not let that bug you down, I think is important.
Some sales people I think are kind of born optimistics people.
They're very, the glass is half full.
That's a very useful strategy I think to have, in terms of managing yourself.
I think that sales people have to be confident in themselves.
And they often, I love this one line they say,
sales is the art of transferring confidence from one person to another.
Now what that quote really means is the idea that,
if I'm the sales person and I really believe that this product can work.
If I can transfer that belief to the customer, I've gotten the sale.
Well, what we're talking about really, is that notion of confidence.
And I think that it begins with people being confident in themselves.
And the way that you build that confidence,
I think is through a steady diet of successes.
And to the extent that you achieve marketplace success,
you will become more confident with that.
Now, when we turn to the business of sales managers,
I think that it's important to understand, sales managers I think have to achieve,
much of what they achieve they achieve through their people.
I think the biggest complaint about sales managers is that they're micromanagers,
they have a tendency to want to do everything themselves when they can't, and
if they try they'll ultimately going to fail.
I think successful salesmen I just recognized that,
they're sort of the quarterback but there's the rest of the team.
And that they need to kind of help lead the team, not be the team themselves.
Successful sales teams I think,
have a number of things in common that helps to make them very successful.
I think that they have a sense of shared values,
they all kind of believe in the values that are important to that mission,
and to that organization, and have fully bought into that.
I think that the sales teams and effective sales teams also recognize
the importance of keeping customers, like first and foremost in their minds.
And in a very customer-centric sales organization,
is a highly functioning sales organization too.
So we often talk about the notion of professionalism.
And everybody talks about professional sales, and
the importance of being professional, and all.
And yet, that's a really tricky thing to define, what it really means.
I'd like to think of when you talk about being a professional sales force,
what that means among other things, is being incredibly customer-centric and
doing things that are best for the customers first and foremost.
That's what drives all of your actions and behaviors that go on.
Sometimes, it's best to not necessarily sell something to a customer because
maybe that's not the right thing that the customer needs at that point and time.
A professional sales person recognizes
that there are times like that, and isn't going to just
reflexively sell something to a customer, when they don't necessarily need that.
So it's keeping customer needs front and center with that.
I've often seen that some of the most effective
sales people, some of the biggest stories to come out of them,
is more like when they didn't sell something to a customer.
And they created such good will and
build up a great reputation of honesty and candor,
that ultimately paid back in many fold in terms of additional sales from that.
So it's just recognizing the importance of the costumer.
What kinds of companies are good example of team based selling?
I think you see really effective use of team based selling in situations where
you've got, it's more of a business to business type of application when you're
selling highly technical, usually complicated types of products and all.
That requires sort of a multidisciplinary team,
to effectively implement in a customer organization.
So, you will see that in the high technology arena,
in some cases in the medical appliances area.
You have outstanding teams that they really serve us customers and
do so, so effectively.
One of the challenges that I think face all sales force management is
the notion of diversity.
And we are living in a society that has become increasingly diverse.
Companies are calling on customers that are likewise very diverse.
And so the notion of having diversity within your sales force,
is really becoming not just an optional thing but really, it's almost required.
It just makes good business sense, to kind of have your sales force
reflect the diversity of your customers that are out there.
There's lots of examples of companies that have recognized the importance of
diversity, and seeing the ultimate impact on in terms of revenue and
innovative thinking and all.
One of the things that, when you talk to customers and
you get them to talk about their relationship with sales people and all,
has to do with the notion of of, do they understand me?
Are they like me?
Do they recognize what my particular needs would be?
Some of that has to do really with diversity issues, to be honest.
And it's important a company step and recognize that.
So, I'm often asked to talk about customer relationship management,
and I think what's important to understand about that,
is that it's almost kind of like a misnomer.
I like to refer to refer to customer relationship management as,
customer expectation management.
It's really about managing the expectations of customers.
And more importantly, meeting or exceeding those expectations.
When you think about it, whenever a customer expresses some level of,
either great satisfaction or the opposite dissatisfaction with something,
isn't it because either their expectations were greatly exceeded?
Or, were actually not met at all.
It's about understanding with those customer expectations would be.
Now, one of the great challenges I think of modern day business and management is
that unfortunately, customer expectations just continue to ratchet upwards.
And what may have been acceptable yesterday, isn't enough today.
But it's really about understanding expectations.
So some of the best practices for self-management and
managing one's emotions and all.
I think that too often, people
sort of will say that this is important, and all.
But it's interesting that in terms of their day-to-day living and
all, they don't seem to make much provision to
acknowledging the importance of self-management.
One of the best practices I think, is periodically taking time out, and stepping
back, and thinking about what you've accomplished over some period of time.
How does that relate to what your goals are?
How does that impact what ought to be your future goals?
Somehow, some way, we never seem to find the time to be able to do that.
And yet, it's so important.
And the people who are really successful, so
there's takeoff time to just simply do that type of an assessment for that.
I know for myself one of the things that I tend to do,
I'll share a best practice for my own personal thing is that,
you're familiar with those little yellow post-it notes and all.
I like to use those post-it notes, to kind of
mark down particular goals that I have, or
some activity that I wish to do, or I hope to achieve and all.
I take that post-it note and I stick that on my bathroom mirror.
And you know, it just is amazing that once I stick it on that bathroom mirror,
somehow someway, I have a way of achieving that particular goal.
But if it never makes the bathroom mirror, [LAUGH] I probably haven't achieved that.
So, how about you?
What are you going to put on your post-it note to stick on that bathroom mirror?
So I'm asked sometimes what a person who thinks of themselves being really great
sales person and all, and would like to move into
sales management but they're not really certain what type of a leader are they.
What kind of advice could we give a person like this, to help them
to find their leadership qualities and take a step up to sales manager?
So, I think that there's a couple things.
Taking this course is a great first step, and I applaud you for
being involved in this and learning about what's involved
in the business of sales management, and sales leadership, and so forth.
I think we all
are born with certain types of leadership qualities and all.
But it actually takes practice, it takes applying
these things in real life situations for us to develop and become real leaders.
So what I’m saying is we’re born with the seeds of leadership,
but it takes a lot of grooming for that.
One of the things that I encourage people to consider, is to look for
opportunities to provide leadership within your own current lifestyle.
For example, getting involved in charitable organizations, or
Civic organizations, or some other type of volunteer opportunity,
can allow you to not only do a lot of good for that organization, but it allows
you to kind of demonstrate and begin to hone some of your leadership skills.
You'll ultimately will begin to develop your
own particular leadership style that you need.
And I think that's a great first step.
So, I'm familiar with a situation
that occurred here with the company.
And it's a great fire fighting type of story and all.
So, there was a company that manufacture a type of an adhesive product.
And this product was used in manufacturing process,
and by a company that manufacture appliance and so forth.
And the interesting thing was that,
there was another company that was involved in the process of this.
And that company, actually, was the one who bought
this adhesive, and used it to develop a component that
was ultimately bought by the manufacturing company.
So the adhesive manufacturer kind of was calling on
their primary customer, that was the component manufacturer.
But they were also calling on the ultimate customer
who bought the product with this product in use.
So, as the story goes, this
adhesive was a very different way of adhering attaching
products together for this and all, and everybody had kind of bought into it.
And also had sort of signed off on the pricing that was necessary for that.
For a number of different reasons though, the company that had made the adhesive,
struck a different deal, in terms of pricing, with the component manufacturer.
And ultimately, ended up increasing the cost of the component
to the ultimate appliance manufacturer.
The appliance manufacturer gets wind of the fact that this deal was made
with this components supplier, and as you might guess was really, really upset.
Right? because they were kind of
blindsided to that.
And the reality was that, next thing we get this phone call
from the appliance manufacturer, and they were irate.
So, what do you do in a situation like that?
You’ve got to make good on it.
You have got to address that person's concerns.
And what we ended up doing was a rebating thing,
that made that appliance manufacturer whole again.
It wasn't the plan that we wanted to do.
And we ultimately really hurt our margins in the process, but it was more about
maintaining the customer relationships to be able to get through it.
So one of the things that I think is important to your career and
growth, is to try to get a sales manager to act as a mentor to you.
And, there is lots of ways to go about doing it, but
perhaps the most obvious is ro actually ask a person.
Hopefully, if you are in a sales position
to reach out to someone who's in a sales management or sales leadership role.
And ask them to serve as a mentor and all.
You'd be surprised, people are often willing,
sometimes very flattered to be able to do that and all.
In some situations, that may not work well.
There's a lot of social media tools that are available now days,
that allow you to put yourself in contact with other people within your industry or
maybe industry conferences, and that type of activity.
The point is trying to identify people who are out there that are serving in that
particular role, and stepping up, and asking them for that.
Now, if you're going to do that.
If you're going to ask a person to be a mentor, please, please,
please be respectful to that person and to their time.
Make it very clear like what is it you would like for them to do.
Hey, can you meet me for a cup of coffee?
To talk about just general advice for
an hour, once a quarter or whatever.
Don't be a huge time drain on people,
that recognize that they'll be willing to do that.
