Amity School of Business

Module III
Sales and Distribution Management

MKTG 302

1
 Topics Amity School of Business

• Concepts of sales force management:

Recruitment and selection of sales
organization
• Sales Training
• Compensating and motivating sales force
• Routing and scheduling of sales force
• Sales Audit
• Analysis of Daily Sales Activity Report

2
 Sales force Management Amity School of Business

• Managing Customer relations effectively needs a well-trained Sales

Force, which is also known as sales force management. 
• The Sale Force is the FACE of the Brand or the Product.
Elements of Sales Force Management:
• Lead Generation
• Sales Forecasting
• Order Management
• Product Knowledge
Functions of Sales Force Management
• Recruitment
• Training and supervision
• Motivation and Incentives
• Sales force evaluation
• Behavioral aspects

3
Amity School of Business

4
Amity School of Business

5
 Sales force size Amity School of Business

The decision on how many salespeople are required to meet the

company’s sales volume and profit objectives is a key decisions.
Salespeople are the company’s very productive and expensive assets.
If the company has less than optimum size of salesforce, there will be a
loss of sales and profits, and if it has more than required numbers,
there will be an increase in sales and costs.
The methods available to determine optimum salesforce size are as
follows:

•Workload
•Sales potential
•Incremental
6
 Hiring Process Amity School of Business

• The process of hiring involves four stages

1)Human resource planning process- key
decisions are made on examining a salesperson’s
turnover in an organization, conducting the strategic
position analysis, establishing the hiring objectives, and
deciding on the number of salespeople for a particular
period of time.
2)Recruitment stage- decisions are made on
identifying the best source of candidates and generating
the pool of candidates for selection.

7
 Amity School of Business

3) Selection- this stage is used to identify the right

candidate for the organization. Decisions involved are
screening, conducting interviews, testing, reference checks,
and medical examinations.
4) Process of socialization- new employees are
oriented towards the organization as also to the units or the
territories in which they would be required to work.

8
 Amity School of Business
SELECTION

TRAINING
RECRUITMENT
JOB SPECIFICATIONS

JOB ANALYSIS

JOB JOB
EVALUATION DESRIPTION

COMPENSATION
AND MOTIVATIONAL
PROGRAMS PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

SALES FORCE MANAGEMENT

 Sales force Recruitment
Amity School of Business
Recruitment forms the first stage in the process of hiring a sales force and is
followed by selection and ends with placement and socialization

Internal Sources External Sources

• Lateral and upward • Other industry sources
moves • Educational institutions
• Interns and cooperative and campus recrutiments
students • Advertising
• Employee referral • Employment Agencies
programmes • Walk-ins
• Networking
• Web sources

10
Selection process
Amity School of Business

11
 Sales Training Amity School of Business

It is an effort an employer makes to provide sales people with job

related knowledge, skills, attitudes and culture that should result in
improved performance on sales, productivity and profits .
It has three phases:
•Assess Sales Training Needs
•Design and execute Sales Training Programmes
•Evaluation and Reinforcement of Sales Training
Programme

Ref: Havaldar

12
 Methods used for assessingAmity School of Business

training needs
• Sales’s managers observation
• Salesforce survey
• Customer survey
• Performance testing
• Job Description
• Sales force audit

13
 Design and execute Sales Amity School of Business

Training Programme
Five decisions to be taken summed up in one word
ACMEE (Aims, content, method, execution,
evaluation)
I) Aims/objectives of sales training –
•Increased sales productivity
•Increase sales , profits or both
•Lower salesforce turnover rate
•Improve customer relations
•Introduce new products, markets and promotional programmes
•Create positive attitudes and improve salesforce territory.
•Prepare new salespeople for assignment to a sales territory
•Improve teamwork and co-operative efforts.
14
 Amity School of Business

II) Content of training programme:

Company knowledge
Product knowledge
Customer knowledge
Competitor knowledge
Selling skills or sales techniques
Additional topics like Negotiating skills, sales presentation
skills, customer relationship building skills, team-selling
skills, time and territory management etc may also be
included.

15
 Amity School of Business

III) Sales training methods; (image pg 6.5 )

Can be grouped in five categories:
•Classroom conference training
•Behavioural training
•Online training
•Absorption training/Self Study
•OJT

16
 Organizational decisions for sales training
Amity School of Business

Who will be the trainees? When should the training

•New and existing take place?
salespeople •Newly hired
•Intermediaries •Refresher
•Sales managers Where should training take
Who will conduct training place?
•Line sales personnel •Centralized training
•Staff trainers •De centralized training
•Outside training specialist What should be the
budgeted expenditure?
Estimate needs to be
approved by the top
management .
17
 Execution of sales training
Amity School of Business

programmes
The following activities are conducted:
•Preparation of time table
•Arranging internal and external trainers
•Making travel arrangements of participants
•Arranging conference hall and teaching
aids.

18
 Evaluation of Sales Training Amity School of Business

Programmes
• Reactions
• Learning
• Behavior
• Results
Reinforce sales training
• Refresher training
• Senior salespeople coaching new salespeople
• Web based to reinforce formal training sessions.

19
Compensating and motivating sales Amity School of Business

force
• Compensating is a widely used tool for motivating sales people.
• The structure of Sales force compensation is as follows:
• Financial compensation includes the following:
1. Direct payment of money
2. Indirect payment which includes fringe benefits such as retirement
plans, medical reimbursement and LTA
• Non-financial compensation like promotion, sense of
accomplishment, personal growth, recognition, job security etc.

20
 Objectives of Compensation Amity School of Business

Plan
The company’s viewpoint The sales’s person viewpoint

• To control salespeople’s • To have regular and

activities incentive income
• To be competitive, yet • To have a simple plan
economical • To have a fair payment
• To be flexible plan.

21
 Designing an Effective Amity School of Business

Compensation Plan
Designing a new compensation plan consists of a
number of steps :
•Examine job description
•Set up specific objectives
•Decide levels of pay/compensation
•Develop the compensation mix
•Decide indirect payment plan
•Pretest, administer and evaluate the plan.
22
 Basic types of compensation Amity School of Business

plan
• Straight salary- A salary is a direct monetary reward
paid for carrying out certain duties over a period of time.
• Straight commission-These plans present strong
financial incentives in order to ensure superior
performance.
• Combination of salary, commission and/or bonus-
these are of the following four types:
• Salary plus commission
• Salary plus bonus
• Salary plus commission plus bonus and
• Commission plus bonus
23
 Straight SalaryAmity School of Business
Advantages
Situations suited to •Secure income
straight salary plan: •Sense of loyalty to the company, thus
•Sales trainees lower turnover
•Missionary sales •Willing to perform non-selling activities
activities, involving such as payment collection etc.
spreading information •Helps increase customer loyalty
instead of asking for •Simple to administer
orders.
Disadvantages
•The company wants to
•No financial incentive to exert more effort
introduce a new line of
products or enter a new •Fixed salary is burden to forms in declining
geographical territory profitability phase.
•Leads to adequate , but not superior
performance

24
Situations suited to a Straight Commission Plan
Amity School of Business
straight commission Advantages
plan. •Strong financial incentive to improve
• Industries like real estate results
and insurance •Attracts high performance
• Direct-sales industry like •Removes ineffective salespersons
Tupperware, Amway and
Avon , pays by straight •Requires less supervision
commission who are Dis-advantages
called as independent •Focus is on sales rather than building long
distributors.
term relationship
• Wholesalers who have
limited working capital, •Less control on non selling activities
pay their salespeople by •Little loyalty to the company
commissions. •Commissions need to be capped or
salesman may earn more than their
managers, thus resentment may arise.

25
 Combination Plan Amity School of Business

Advantages Disadvantages
• Can control the activities • More complex plan and
of salespeople. difficult to administer
• Flexibility to reward the • Too many short term and
activities of salesforce fire fighting type
• Feeling of security objectives
• Allows rewards for • May not achieve desired
frequent and specific objectives if not carefully
sales behaviour planned and
• Different combination implemented.
plans can be developed
for sales trainees etc. 26
Motivating the sales force
Amity School of Business

27
Amity School of Business

28
Amity School of Business

29
Amity School of Business

30
 Sales Audit Amity School of Business

• While the Sales Audit may sound a complex term, it is

actually quite simple. It is usually performed by an
external auditor with both Sales and Marketing teams
and analyzes the components that make up the sale.
• It is very important that both Sales and Marketing teams
need to be there for the audit since both divisions are
closely knit and the interpersonal relationship and
dependency of each division is what brings in the
business.

31
 4 Main Steps in Sales Audit : Amity School of Business

1) Manpower audit :Sales Auditor may check and scrutinize the hiring
methodologies of sales reps used by the company. A complete record of the
Salesperson is checked including, background, references, method of selection,
salary, increase or decrease in training programs for the Sales team and any other
component which may be important.
2) 2) Market Audit : Market conditions are evaluated by the auditors to determine
whether the targets given to employees are feasible or not and they are compared with
market standards and industry growth rate. This helps to not only determine the
feasibility of sales targets but also helps to determine early bird advantage if any for
the company.
3) Sales procedures :The auditor then goes on to check Sales procedures
employed by the company including the price, discounts, promotion offers, special
offers and ultimately the net profit margin. This is an elaborate step and requires a
detailed analysis by the auditor. The auditor compares ideal sales procedures vis-à-vis
the actual procedures carried out.
4) Customer service evaluation :Since the retention of customer and
repurchase of product or service solely depends on customer service and after-sales
service, Sales Auditor performs a check on them. Also, a genuine customer feedback
is obtained from the Customer service which can be passed on to the respective
teams.
32
 Advantages of Sales Audit Amity School of Business

1.  Maximizing profits :
2. Budgeting :
3. Reputation :
4. Capital Market
5. Lower Capital Cost 
6. Fraud :
7. Operational improvisations
8.  Business Value
9. Dispute Settlement
10.  Ethical behavior 

33
 Disadvantages of Sales Audit Amity School of Business
• Cost-The Sales Audit involves dealing with Sales and Marketing
departments and its heads, and also sometimes with every team member to
go over specific details of a particular sale. This can be tedious on account
of Auditor and at times the auditor may also have to go to other departments
for clarifications. This involves a lot of cost on the company’s account. 
• Staff harassment-  Since numerous employees are involved in Sales
Auditing, there is a chance that some of them may feel harassed and
unnecessarily bothered with time and time again. This can lead to conflicts.
• Chances of Fraud- Since the information of Audit report can make or
break a company’s reputation, auditors are often made to commit fraud in
reports. Internal fraud can be beneficial for the company in the short run but
in long run, it can damage company reputation.
• Manipulation- Audit reports are often based on the data presented by the
company, and many times, the reports may be manipulated thus the audit reports
themselves may be fake. This is a major concern of Sales Auditing.
• Auditing starts at the micro level. Self-auditing as a person would improve us even at
a personal level and in turn the company at the macro level. Sales Auditing would be
similar to Self-auditing.
34
 Analysis of Daily Sales Activity Amity School of Business

Report
• A sales report, or sales analysis report, gives an overview of the
state of the sales activities within a company. It shows the different
trends happening in the sales volume over a certain time, but also
analyzes the different steps of the sales funnel and the performance
of sales executives.
• How To Make A Sales Report?
• When you write a report, you need to keep your final objectives in
mind. To master the report writing, there are a couple of crucial
question that you need to ask yourself: who are you reporting for,
and why? Is this a weekly check-up or an assessment of a situation
or a campaign project? What is the time period of the report? What
is the main message you want to share?

35
Amity School of Business

36
How To Make A Sales Report? Amity School of Business

• Define your audience: before writing, think about who will read and what they need
to know. Consider their background as well and if they are familiar with the jargon you
might use. It’s not the same if you write for a sales audience or a general one.
• Define the purpose of your report: sharing monthly advancement with top
management, or just having the weekly overview and analysis of the sales objectives
with your team. Both reports will have a different structure and the info you will share
will also be very different.
• Decide on a time period: that means that you can create a daily as well as a
monthly report, or choose to display the data of the last quarter or year. Later in this
article, you can see examples of each.
• Gather the right data: since you have set specific KPIs to track, you now just need to
compile them all together and analyze them with the help of online BI tools. They are
specifically designed to ease your data and create compelling sales analysis reports
in no time.

37
How To Make A Sales Report? Amity School of Business

• Visualize and communicate your findings: the most important

part, once you have analyzed and dug out insights from your data,
is to convey this information to your audience. Using a
professional business intelligence dashboard that works with real-
time data will always let you up to date when sharing your insights.
• Provide context: an aspect often forgotten, when we are deep in
the reporting mindset, is that numbers never tell the full story.
Provide some background and a bigger picture to the figures,
especially if you are presenting weekly sales report templates for
instance: how was the situation been the month, the quarter? Is the
general trend going up or down?
• Get creative! When building your report, add a little bit of fun or
more personal touch that will catch the attention of your audience
and make you more confident while presenting!

38