Sales Monitoring Procedures
Discuss about the Monitoring Sales Performance for Personal Selling & Sales Management.
The main body of the report has been divided into two parts – Task 1 and Task 2. In task 1, firstly, the company’s performance has been discussed with reference to the annual report of the company as to what strategies have been adopted by the company. Secondly, the general procedures has been listed and detailed as to how the company shall monitor the performance of the company with the regards to the sales activity and how the performance shall be evaluated against the defined standards. In task 2, the activity that has been done in the task 1 has been complied and presented and accordingly the recommendations for improvement have been given as to how the company can improve its activity in relation to sales. The report has then ended up with the conclusion and contains the checklist that has been used in task 1 as appendices. With these considerations, the report has been provided into different sections and the source of the information has been cited as references.
For the purpose of Monitoring and evaluating of the sales activity, the company – Australian Finance Group Limited and is very relevant to the study as monitoring has to be discussed for financial products and services. The company has been established in the year of 1994 and has been one of the largest leaders in the mortgage broking groups and that too out of the 3000 plus brokers in the financial industry (Company Official Website, 2017). It helps the finance seekers to have the finance from the different banks and the finance seeker can himself chose the better offer. The company has been selected only because of its linkage with the financial products and which is the very requirement of the assignment.
There are different procedures through which the company usually monitors the performance of their sales. The procedures have been detailed below:
- Implementation of Policies – The first and the foremost procedure is to provide the detailed policies as to how the company shall sell their financial products and services to the customers (Verbeke, 2012). These policies shall be clear and defined so as to enable the managers to implement them in the true spirit on one side and on the other side will help them in measuring the performance of the company in regard to the adherence to the policies of the companies (Ahearne, 2014).
- Implementation of Procedures – After defining of the policies, the procedures that shall be adopted in accordance to make the sales shall be defined and laid down across the organization. The procedures so made shall be defined and laid down in the very clear and prescribed manner. It shall be laid down from the top management to the lower level management (Goolsby, 2012 and Gomez, 2014). It is the procedures which will ensure that the policies have been implemented correctly and will be followed in the way it is prescribed by the management of the company.
- Cash Transactions – The major area for monitoring in the sales is related to the cash transactions. The transaction which does not involve the cash is of course the non cash transactions and will be reflected in the bank statement directly. But for the transactions which involve the cash usually carries some percentage of manipulation. There may be the possibility of having the higher reported revenues for having the investors and other stakeholder’s attention and there may be the possibility of having lower reported revenues for not declaring the dividend (Datta, 2013). Therefore, the policies and the procedures relating to the cash transactions shall be made in the defined and the proper manner so as to ensure the proper control and the monitoring thereon of the sales which involves the huge amount of the cash transactions (Giacobbe, 2016).
- Correctly recording of the Sales transactions – The other major policy that the company shall adopt is to ensure that the sale transactions that are being done shall be recorded in the correct and timely manner. It plays vital role in the monitoring procedures (Hultink, 2010). It is because if the sales are recorded incorrectly than the reported sales figure will be wrong and which in turn will lead to the dissatisfaction amongst the customers and the stakeholders regarding the credibility and the standing of the company (Jackson, 2014).
- Needs of the customer and the remedial action – The last procedure that all the companies generally followed is that the products or the services that the company is offering shall be at par with the needs of the customers. If does not matches than the company will not be able to run in the future. Secondly, the company shall be able to take the correctives or the remedial action in case any form of deficiencies is encountered by the customer and in case it is not resolved then the performance of the company will get deteriorated (Brown, 2012 and Cook, 2011).
Thus, in this manner, every company adopts the above policies and procedures for monitoring the sales performance of the company.
Apart from discussing the general procedures that shall be adopted for the purpose of the monitoring, the detail of the company with regard to the sales targets, client service and the performance has been detailed. The same has been done with reference to the annual report of the company for the year ending 30th of June 2017 and other related reports and details.
Description Of Company
Sales Targets – For the year of the 2017, the company has targeted that the settlements with the customers shall increase at least 30 percent as compared with the year of 2016 and the loans as reflecting in the books shall be increased by at least 35 percent. As per the annual report of the company, the company has achieved the growth of the 38% in respect of the settlements and 44% in respect of the book loans. The target relating to settlements have been added as a Short term incentive, being the part of the remuneration to the directors of the company (Covin and Slevin, 2012).
Client Service Standard – The Company has been striving only because of the fact that the company has been focusing on the needs of the customer and year on year basis the company has been changing and modifying the financial products and services as required by the customers (Cravens, 2011). At first the company has been providing the business loan and with the passage of time it has entered into different type of loans as home loan and that too with four sub heads which includes – loan for new home, renovation, first home and another home (MacKenzie, 2013).
Performance – As per the annual report of the company, the sales of the company has been increased from AUD 482331 in the year of 2016 to AUD 539759 in the year of 2017. It denotes that the company has been performing well and has been gaining the importance in the market. The performance measure includes the gross profit ratio, net profit ratio and other similar financial ratios (MacKenzie, 2012).
The sales play a very important role in defining the value of the company. If the company is not able to sell its products and services then it will be interpreted that either the company’s products and services are not up to the mark of the requirements of the clients or the customers of the company or the company is not able to control the activity of the sales and the market performance in relation to the current and proposed market expectations and the fluctuations. In this report the second perspectives have been discussed in detail with reference to the monitoring and the evaluation of the performance of the sales activity. For the purpose of the study, the company – Australian Finance Group Limited has been chosen. The company is the listed company in the recognized stock exchange of Australia. It operates in the sector of banking. The task one interpretations along with the checklist has been compiled in the report format.
General Procedures For Monitoring Performance
Under this heading, the checklist has been reviewed and the answers thereon have been compiled and have been interpreted with reference to the continuity of the company (Company Official Website, 2017). The checklist has been annexed as the appendix. The result including the discussion has been detailed below:
- Business Planning – The Company has planned in terms of the strategy and the finance in the better possible manner. There is one exception in each of the sphere. In the strategy, the company has not mentioned any critical performance issues that have been encountered during the year (Ruf, 2013). In the finance, the projection that has been taken for revenue does not take into account the current market conditions rather is based on the past experience.
- Productivity – The company performance in terms of the productivity is up to the mark except two deficiencies. The first deficiency is that the company has not included the hurdles that the staff encounters in performing their job in the job description. The second deficiency is that while updating the technology its uses by the other organizations are not looked which means the market survey is not done (Stewart, 2016).
- Assets – This section is very important as it creates the net worth of the company. It includes management of stock, work in progress, debtor and cash flows and capital investment. As the company is into the finance industry, the stock and the work in progress management will not be applicable here and is thus not counted for assessing the performance of the company. The company operations have shown that the debtors are being managed properly as the cash collection from the customers has been increased from AUD 440572 in the year of 2016 to AUD 462454 in the year of 2017. But the management of overall cash flows is poor as the company has generated the deficit of AUD 5864 in the cash and cash equivalents.
- Profitability – It contains the three major heads – pricing, volume and customers. Pricing and volume are being reviewed regularly and the feedback from the customers are taken with respect to the services of the company and its staff and if requires the company takes the remedial action.
- Expenses – It contains three heads – fixed, variable and suppliers. The company has been following all the desired steps as mentioned in the check list.
- Risk Management – There are two types of risks – one is external and the other one is external. The company does not take into account the risks that are potential to the nature of the business of the company. For instance Lehman Brothers collapse which has waved the sense of shock in the financial industry.
- Innovation – The Company encourages the new ideas and improvements and usually provides the incentives to the staffs.
Conclusion
Monitoring and evaluating of the sales activity has been detailed in this report. The data of Australian Finance Group Limited has been selected and accordingly the sales and the performance of the company have been discussed in detail. The company has been able to achieve the turnover as targeted and has provided the better earnings per share to the stakeholders of the company. The checklist has been duly followed and has been used for preparing the report. The client’s perspective has also been detailed as to how the company has been serving its customers and whether it has been positive or negative. In order to conclude the report, the procedures for monitoring the performance of the sales of company have been well detailed and described.
It’s recommended for the companies operating in different sector to effectively evaluate and monitor the performance of the company relating to each and every function of the company.
References
Ahearne, M., (2014). Effect of technology on sales performance: Progressing from technology acceptance to technology usage and consequence. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 24(4), 297-310.
Brown, S. P., (2012). The effect of effort on sales performance and job satisfaction. The Journal of Marketing, 70-80.
Cook, W. D., (2011). Sales performance measurement in bank branches. Omega, 29(4), 299-307.
Australian Finance Group Limited, (2017), “Annual Report 2017” available on https://www.afgonline.com.au/ accessed on 31/07/2018
Covin, J. G., & Slevin, D. P. (2012). Strategic management of small firms in hostile and benign environments. Strategic management journal, 10(1), 75-87.
Cravens, D. W., (2011). An analytical approach for evaluating sales territory performance. The Journal of Marketing, 31-37.
Datta, S., (2013). Value creation in corporate asset sales: The role of managerial performance and lender monitoring. Journal of Banking & Finance, 27(2), 351-375.
Giacobbe, R. W., (2016). A contingency approach to adaptive selling behavior and sales performance: Selling situations and salesperson characteristics. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 26(2), 115-142.
Goolsby, J. R., (2012). Psychological adaptiveness and sales performance. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 12(2), 51-66.
Gomez, M. I., (2014). Customer satisfaction and retail sales performance: an empirical investigation. Journal of retailing, 80(4), 265-278.
Hultink, E. J., (2010). The effect of sales force adoption on new product selling performance. Journal of Product Innovation Management: AN INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATION OF THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT & MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION, 17(6), 435-450.
Jackson, S. E., (2014). Diversity in social context: a multi?attribute, multilevel analysis of team diversity and sales performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 25(6), 675-702.
Kaplan, R. S.(2012). Transforming the balanced scorecard from performance measurement to strategic management: Part I. Accounting horizons, 15(1), 87-104.
MacKenzie, S. B., (2013). The impact of organizational citizenship behavior on evaluations of salesperson performance. The Journal of Marketing, 70-80.
Ruf, B. M., (2013). An empirical investigation of the relationship between change in corporate social performance and financial performance: A stakeholder theory perspective. Journal of business ethics, 32(2), 143-156.
Stewart, G. L. (2016). Reward structure as a moderator of the relationship between extraversion and sales performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81(6), 619.
Verbeke, W.,. (2012). Drivers of sales performance: a contemporary meta-analysis. Have salespeople become knowledge brokers?. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 39(3), 407-428.
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