All the strategies presented so far must be applied and potentiated by the commercial team of the company, in the specific task of approaching each group of clients, where the consistency and coherence of the actions, facts, measures or events that the marketing strategist has considered the most appropriate to achieve the purchase decision.
In the process of planning sales management, a journey is made that starts from the review of the characteristics of the company and that leads to the determination of permanent evaluation mechanisms on all proposals and executions that involve marketing, sales, service to the client, logistics and portfolio, within the framework of the principles established in one-to-one marketing and the structuring of the entire organization based on the satisfaction of the needs and expectations of the prioritized clients.
For this reason, all commercial strategists are integrated in the review and implementation of a series of steps or minimum stages that compile the proposals incorporated in the relationship marketing plan, in coherence with the guidelines and directives consigned in the development plan. corporate.
This sequence involves exhausting the following steps:
1. Knowledge of the company
2: Knowledge of the product characteristics
3: Knowledge of the target customer segments
4: Establishment of relevant databases
5: Establishment of approach strategies
6: Direct marketing actions
7: Planning the field work
8: The budget game
9: The work team
10: Permanent evaluation
Which are described below:
1. Knowledge of the company
In compliance with the management objectives that have been assigned around the profitability, growth, positioning and competitiveness that every organization must achieve, one of the first considerations to take into account is derived from the nature of the company itself.
The analysis has as a starting point the adequate dimensioning of the operational capacity of the organization, the structuring of the company based on the satisfaction of the expectations of users or consumers, the availability of a sufficiently qualified work team and always act under the sound criterion of not creating a market that is not able to serve.
2. Knowledge of the characteristics of the product
Second, all those attributes and benefits obtained by the consumer or user when acquiring or accessing the good or service must be taken into consideration.
In the case corresponding to the intangibility characteristics of the services, a significant effort will be required on the part of the company and its sales force, to make the user achieve a visualization of the service acquired, in an event that ultimately It shows the customer a coherence between the sales arguments presented and the profits earned, allowing them to build a mental image that will facilitate the purchase decision.
Another of the elements that should be highlighted corresponds to the importance of guaranteeing, both within the company and towards customers, homogeneous quality standards, since it is very frequent that complaints are generated in this regard and the repurchase processes.
Here, it plays a very important role to highlight the quality of the human resource and the technological level involved, insofar as they constitute added values to the internal client-external client interrelation.
Of course, all these exposed elements require a high level of integration between the work team in charge of the technical productive activity and the person in charge of the marketing activities, to avoid inconsistencies and inconsistencies that would be easily perceived by customers and that lead to the loss of credibility and image of the entity, with the consequent drop in the number of clients and expected sales volumes.
3. Knowledge of the target customer segments
The next step should address the task of micro-segmenting the total target customers as best as possible, understanding that there are groups of people with well-differentiated characteristics, activities, attitudes, opinions and interests and that, to the extent that they manage to integrate into homogeneous groups, their knowledge and analysis will be facilitated to identify the best possible actions that satisfy the expectations of each one, defining micro-marketing tasks and forming the strategic units that will govern what the company does.
During the micro-segmentation, the nature and characteristics of the clients, such as natural or legal persons, the validity of the link with the company, the purchase volumes, the purchasing habits and the consumption habits, must be considered. as well as all the information that is required in order to understand their behavior in general and that facilitate the specific identification of the target groups, with their corresponding quantification.
4. Formation of the pertinent databases
Taking as a foundation the criteria that were set in the micro-segmentation, the next step leads to the determination of the number of people or organizations that make up each of them, building the data that facilitate their subsequent contact.
These primary databases can be built from existing documentary information sources within the company or at the level of union and institutional organizations, publications, directories, etc.
They can also be formed by counting on the information collected directly by the sales force, by personnel in direct contact with customers or, by means of instruments to capture records, such as surveys and forms, but always obeying the guidelines and criteria. established in the micro segmentation.
5. Establishment of approach strategies
The customer approach maneuvers are basically associated with the marketing strategies that are stipulated as the most appropriate to the reality found for the market as a whole and for the specific segments.
These actions suppose sufficient clarity regarding the portfolio of products that will be presented for each group of clients, where not necessarily everything will be offered for everyone, being possible to make partial presentations of the services offered.
There must also be clarity of both the policies and the pricing strategies with which each micro segment will face, recognizing that they can be potentiated by establishing differential prices consistent with the purchasing power that each one may have.
On the other hand, a media plan must be defined related to the advertising and promotional strategy, which contributes to the corporate image and identity of each product included in the portfolio, with the support of integrated direct marketing efforts, with actions telemarketing, direct mail and internet use.
The other task involved in the approach is associated with the selection of the service provision network or the distribution network and the particularities that guarantee its efficiency in serving customers, who must also have specific customer service measures. client, understood fundamentally as a marketing and sales strategy, rather than as organizational culture work, engaging internal clients in this intention.
It is clear that at this stage of the analysis, defining the marketing strategies will facilitate the work of the sales force, not only due to the dissemination of the company and its products, as well as the level of knowledge reached by the target customers and the market in general, but also because each one of the defined tactics constitutes a sales argument and alternative responses to eventual objections to the good or service.
6. Direct marketing actions
From the previous steps, there is a series of moments focused on field work, which begin with telemarketing tasks of verification and consolidation of the databases, to give way to an expectation campaign, which will be done simultaneously with mail direct, management of forms and use of communication media according to the target customer groups, to then resume telemarketing, now focused on scheduling the work of the sales force, making appointments with potential customers.
7. Planning of field work
Once the potential clients have been located and the visit schedule has been specified, an identification of their physical location is carried out, so that based on this activity, a vision of the geographical distribution of the clients can be had and some criteria of geographic delimitation or zoning that will facilitate adequate coverage of the target market, from the territorial point of view.
Already within each area, the routes, or visit sequences, will be established that allow the potentiation of the field work of the sales force, by setting a series of criteria on which the number of clients to visit must be determined., calculated from the weighting of the average visit times plus the average travel times.
Of course, the estimates vary from group to group of clients and according to the sales process, the type of product and the characteristics of the average type of clients in the segment, but, in any sense, the essential thing is that under these parameters the they can build achievement reports and progress indicators for sales management as a whole.
8. The budget game
Simultaneously with the field work, it paves the way for a fairly important task that is related to the adoption of deferred processes, applied to the budget load assigned for the period and for the entire work team.
Regardless of the mechanics with which the budget has been determined and regardless of which people or positions have established it, deferring the budget charges contributes and largely guarantees the fulfillment of the sales goals of the product, since they are incorporating critical factors for the good achievement of the management, such as time, (year, month, weeks, days….), geographical area, (area, route, client,…) work team, (manager, assistant, supervisor, vendors,…), which, as can be seen, are factors that are integrated and interrelated.
By identifying the partial achievements of sales management, one also gains in the adjustment of results, from period to period, from area to area, and even from customer to customer, since by having control over these, they can be adopted the corrective measures that avoid lags greater than those that could occur due to any eventuality originating in the market, facilitating compliance with the budgetary goals already indicated.
9. The work team
The entire structure presented so far takes up a consideration that has gained space in companies: the professionalization of the sales force.
The company gains nothing if its team of collaborators is not prepared in an ideal way to assume the responsibility of being the executors of the indicated tasks, as well as it is lost when it faces the target customers with a sales force that is not trained and motivated to fully comply with the assigned tasks.
Hence, it is necessary to have clarity in the criteria and processes of selection of the sales force, as well as in the training and development of the same, without neglecting the assessment of the socio-economic conditions, growth and personal development, both as a professional, that the company offers.
In short, a sales force must be formed that is at the same level as customers.
10. Permanent evaluation
The final requirement in the planning of sales management concerns the requirement to make permanent evaluations, both in the entry, as well as in the process and exit, in order to identify the goals achieved and compare these results with the budgeted goals.
This evaluation will also have to point out those critical components that have had an impact on some unfavorable result for the organization, anticipating the corrective measures that may arise, always under criteria that contribute to carry out a process of continuous improvement.
From this derives a series of very important tasks, which help to feed back the completed processes and guarantee the achievement of a satisfied customer with the products that have been requested and that the company has offered, giving way to the restart of a new cycle, which will far exceed the budgetary goals and provide contributions so that the pertinent management is gradually improved, always depending on the client.
