Approaches to Customer Satisfaction
The article will evaluate the nature and the role of salespersons connected with the marketing planning. The traditional and new marketing and sales policies will be discussed such as consumer retention and costing and management of resources needed in the application of the marketing and sales policies. The different approaches will be adopted to satisfy the customers and business purchasing demands. The paper also analyses the various marketing and sales techniques, so that the buyers are attracted from the particular consumer’s groups. It will also explain the use of marketing and sales strategies to influence the customer and business purchaser behavior.
The different approaches to the satisfaction of the customers are as follows:
- Consumer Retention Approach -There are two types of customers mentioned in the article; business to business (B2B) customers and business to consumer (B2C) customers. Most of the firms had found that 80% of their sales had come from 20% of their clients (Möller and Parvinen, 2015). So it is important to allocate the considerable amount of resources to retain their high potential and profitable consumers. Account management has become an essential part of the sales so that the sales teams could concentrate on the essential consumers. On the other hand, the firms had found that some of the small consumers are the actual price of the company’s investment. It is due to the distribution and servicing of the goods provided to those consumers who might generate revenue beyond the expectations.
- Database Management -The sales team had to learn the usage and creation of client’s databases as well as the utilization of the internet to support the sales works. The sales teams in the past used to record the details of the consumers in cards and sent the orders by post to the head office. But at present, due to the technical development like the email, smartphones and video conferencing, the method of collecting the customers’ details has changed (Johnston and Marshall, 2016). Computers and laptops help the salesperson to store the data of the clients and the competitors and create presentations and interact with the head office by digital means. Moreover, the data provided by the organization like the catalogs and price lists could also be held digitally.
- Customer Relationship Management -The customer relationship management has to make sure that the sales team concentrates on the long-term and not only on closing the next sale (Solomon, 2016). The importance has to be on creating successful circumstances with the consumers so that both the parties are on the favorable terms and continue their relationship. It might also engage the dedicated sale teams to the service and maintenance of every aspect of the business relationship.
- Product Marketing -The sales teams are engaged in a much more full range of activities along with the preparation and presentation of the sales work. The face-to-face presentations have changed into the web pages presentations and email attachments which provides the updated information to the consumers on several topics more quickly and more conveniently than the face-to-face communications (Järvinen and Taiminen, 2016). Most the current sales, specifically in the case of B2B customers, the salesperson acts as a consultant to recognize the issue of the consumers, decide the requirements the customers and offer and apply the efficient solutions.
- Value-added Approach -A salesperson should have the capability to recognize and satisfy the needs of the consumers. Some of the consumers do not understand their own need. In these situations, it is the responsibility of the salesperson to help the customers realize their need. As, customers do not know that the older and less technically developed machines manufacture low productivity (Agnihotri, Dingus, Hu, and Krush, 2016). A salesperson must alert the consumer about the issue and to convince them that they need to modernize the production method. In the whole process, the salesperson would have added value to the business of the consumers by decreasing the costs and creating a prosperous circumstances for their consumers and their organization.
The main job of the salesperson is to close a sale successfully. This task of the salesperson includes recognition of the needs of the consumers, demonstration and presentation, bargaining, controlling the objections and concluding the sale (Jobber and Lancaster, 2015). Self-management is vital for the salesperson as they often work individually under personal supervision. A salesperson has to make their strategy, which might consist of divisions of the territory into sections, which has to cover regularly and then decide the best route to follow between the calls (Rodriguez, Peterson and Ajjan, 2015). Most of the salespersons believe that the most efficient routing strategy is to drive out to the farthest consumer and then back to home base. But it had revealed that adopting a round-trip method results in a low mileage. It has been found that the only 20-30% of the salesperson spent most their day in facing the clients. Another aspect of the salesperson is taking decisions on the call frequency. It is sensible to categorize the clients by their potentiality (Homburg, Jozi? and Kuehnl, 2017). This concept applies to all types of sales, but it is sensible to either left it to the salesperson’s decisions or arranged centrally as a sales manager. The risk involved in this method is that the overfriendliness with the clients rather than the actual possibility of the sales. But it is also true that the salespersons are in the best position to decide for themselves regarding the need of the time to spend with the clients.
The salesperson working in the same organization for several years depends mostly on some fixed clients to give the same orders repeatedly instead of searching for new customers. It is a fact that the salesperson is more comfortable to depend on old customers. However, the nature of industrial sales is that due to the long product life, the growth of sales relies on seeking and selling the products to the new consumers (Cummins et al., 2016). The salespersons are in a better position to give the facility of the consultation to the clients. As they are meeting several clients each year, they know the solutions to every issue related to the customers. The salesperson might advise the clients for the improvement of the products or reducing the price. The salesperson is in charge of the sales and marketing techniques made by the management. The misunderstanding in the plan could have a severe effect on sales. The credibility of the minimum cost and higher position in the market could be seriously affected due to the over-eagerness of the sales teams to provide large discounts on the minimum price. It could be solved by determining the discount at the managerial level by the sensitivity of the cost of the different market segments. The sales teams will then decide the cost of the discount for each category of consumers. This means that the policy of positioning of products will remain the same and permit the sales teams to implement the required discount. The successful application could bring the difference between winning and losing new accounts. An efficient method of gaining an account at the time of severe competition is the diversion (Katsikea and Skarmeas, 2015). The target is to distract the competitors from focusing its efforts on saving one account and avoid the others.
The Importance of Self-management for Salespersons
The internet, e-commerce, information technology (IT), wireless technology and mobiles, each of these have a significant effect on the productivity and management of the sales teams as well on the consumer’s behavior (Madhavaram et al., 2017). As, the IT system has rapidly changed the working and social lives of peoples with the invention of ATMs, laptops, computers, and household appliances. Landline phones and letters were the media of communication until the recent past along with the fax and pagers. The smartphones and emails emerged, and the interaction among the businessmen had become almost instantly. In the past, the salespersons used the traditional ways to confirm their arrangements and quotations by raising the letters to close their simple business deals. Firstly these had taken place by fax and then by web-based purchasing and emails. Also, the role of the secretary had almost disappeared as most of the salespersons are generating their letters with the help of templates and quotation software. In the transactional purchases, the consumers could show their quotations by clarifying some criteria by the web-based purchasing method. The different fields are entered, and automatically the quotations are produced by the method of web-based purchasing, which is according to the laws of the organization. At present most of the data are accessed with the help of IT, laptops and PDAs, not only by the sales teams or the managers, but anybody in the organization who need to know about the previous agreement with the clients like the customer service or the technical help (Tarkiainen et al., 2015).
The important benefits of this are that any details related to a client could be entered in their file so that all would be alert about the discussions, remarks or offers made with the customer. These methods are currently widely utilized, specifically in larger companies trying to control their details of the consumer more effectively and with less dependence on paper or human brain (Arnett and Wittmann, 2014). The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is widely used in sales related areas like the banks, manufacturing firms, catalogs and taxi companies where the record of all previous transactions, explorations, buying profiles and other communications are preserved. As, the details of related to the family anniversaries, hobbies, likes and dislikes of the pets could be entered to help in building a more common bond between the salespersons and the clients involved in the sales procedures. The CRM process provides many benefits in handling the clients, and recognizing the micro-segments in the entire base of the clients, for highly concentrated campaigns and advertisement of the marketing (Gammoh et al., 2018). These methods are also able to understand and create actual profit and loss statements on the individual accounts. The competence of the salesperson and the whole firm deals with each customer separately.
Decision Making on Call Frequency
Conclusion
The paper had explained the nature and the role of salespersons connected with the marketing planning. The traditional and new marketing and sales policies had been discussed such as consumer retention and costing and management of resources needed in the application of the marketing and sales policies. The different approaches had been adopted to satisfy the customers and business purchasing demands. The article had also analyzed the various marketing and sales techniques so that the buyers are attracted from the particular consumer’s groups. Moreover, it had explained the use of marketing and sales strategies to influence the customer and business purchaser behavior.
References
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