sales quota

dear participants,

last class we had a discussion on quota and how quota is decided
we had spoken about
1) volume quota
2) budget quota
3)combination quota

and sales territory forecast and potential also plays an important role in deciding the sales quota as well as sales budget also helps in deciding the quota which helps in deciding the compensation plan for the end user .

the mantra of assigned quota and realistic quota is also very important for the sales person .

the holistic approach of sales guy in understanding the quota is critical and helpful



Keep Blogging

Ankush

After sales service is also very important

I started my career in an automobile industry, it was a Joint venture of MAN,german based company and FORCE motors ltd. and it was a new plant in Pithampur(M.P) and was at initial stage. I joined there as a G.E.T and allotted Engine Assembly and Testing department and it was mere 50 engines had been tested when I have joined.

I will share some of my experiences regarding sales of our HCV trucks, the engine was of high power and the trucks our company use to manufacture are of 16,24 and 49 tonner and it was sold in domestic as well as in abroad mainly in south-africa. We had monthly target of 270 engines and pull system was followed. So as it was initial stage there was lot of quality related problems such as low power, high smoke, overheating and many of them and I was the only G.E.T in engine department so I have to deal with the customer complaints from the field and have to discuss the issue with my manager.

As many of our customers use these trucks for mining and construction operations. I like to share one of my experience with a customer who had 10 of such trucks of our company and he had got in one of our vehicles problem of engine overheating. He was a valued cutomer of ours and had also he had our competitior’s trucks such as Tata novus and Mercedes benz. My manager discusses such problems in morning meeting and it was and serious issue and customer was very furious and asked us to immediately change the engine. But I it will incur lot of expense as one engine cost is around 2 lacs. So we have decided to send one good diploma engineer from our team at field to trace the problem and it was not figured out and than we have to brought the engine to our company and after some testing it was finally send again to the customer.

The point I got from it that Pre sale testing of product is must, Customer is king and also that not only sales matters but after sales service matters most in automobile industry. The product must be of good quality and would have competitive edge for generating sales and also maintaining it.

Sales Quota

Why sales Quota is given . General perception

What happen when u establish a goal and belive in it .....? U will start work towards it .
What happens when you achive it ? you feel good about yourself . It will fill you with a satisfying
feeling of confidence and self worth

On the otherhand if u dont have any goal, you may get lazy ,and not care for it , it is practicle situation which is happining in our daily life .Realistic goal can be effictive motivators

A sales quota is a GOAL; it is a target u expect yours sales staff to meet.
It must be a target they expect to meet as well
One of the Survey says that on an average only 65% of the salesperson reach the sales quota
General things to be taken into consideration while formaliting sales quota for your team in future
1 Dont Make the time period longer then a months . shoter the period better to achive .
2 A quota , to be effictive, must be achievable. Other wise dont use them
3 To stimulate all urs sales staff , report every ones progress during the months in percentage for all to see
4 Dont use quota system as a weapon to threaten poor performers . It will not solve the problem,

sales territory

we had a discussion in sales territory on last day to have a understanding of quota which help the sales guy to know their own work place and deciding on the compensation plan.
the pointers are
1) geographical location
2)product
3) assigning resources to them
4) but geographical location is replaced by information technology
some area where GL still matter pharma ,fmcg,print etc.. at the end of the day as per increasing in the technological aspect there will be decrease in tangible territory


c ya
Ankush

Customer attraction

I started my career as a Management Trainee in Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi where I was privileged to be deputed on the V.I.P floor, thus getting first experience in catering needs of high profile guests. Dealing with V.I.P’s was a challenging job because they had to be dealt with utmost care.Because first impression is the last impression.

After my stint at Taj, I joined Barclay's Bank where I worked in their Business loan asset division. It was a corporate sales.Here I was assigned to lead a team of 6 salesmen whom I had to guide in achieving our targets. Here I made good use of my skills in handling customers that I had gathered from my experience in hospitality industry while working for Taj. Where sales pitch plays a major role.Being persistent in my efforts in convincing the client to buy our product/service helped me immensely in converting a lead into final sale.Where pre sales preparation was very important.I also succeeded in cross selling other products like credit cards, loan against property clubbing them with business loans that I primarily dealt with. All of this helped in advancing my career in Barclay's. See you in class!!!!

View from the other side: Buyer's Perspective

This is regarding my experience in whirlpool of India Ltd as a Material Engineer in Product Development center, Pune. I was working under Regional Technology Leader Materials for Whirlpool Asia. It was a great learning experience. We used to work on new developments in materials related to refrigerator. Our work was divided into two types of projects: Cost cutting and Innovations.

In both cases we were dependent on mostly our suppliers. Being a Multinational company and buying power, our suppliers used to come prepared with their innovative sales pitch, Many times General Manager and above level people used to come to present their products. CEO and Directors of small company too used to come to meet us.

During our meeting, we actually used to check their presales preparation, though at that time, I was not knowing these terminologies, but we used to check their knowledge about industry, competition etc. In technology related issues also we used to check for their technical knowledge, People who used to say that next time we will bring technical person with us, we don’t know about these details now, used to hardly get chance to represent themselves again soon. Many times sales people used to promise that they will send sample material in 10 days etc and then actually used send after a month or so, we also used to delay our trials and keep them waiting for a long time. Excuses like it’s in shipping or some problem with scheduling etc always used to ridicule upon.

On the other hand people who used to come on time and present themselves well and handled problems and questions well always gets more preference for business. We also used to consult those suppliers regarding different material related problems. We even used to contact these sales people who had came to sell their product but couldn’t closed the sale for our technical helps etc and they also used to help as much as possible as for them we were prospects.

Sometimes sales pitch used to take place in some so called conference in 5 star hotels followed by dinner but we used to look at it as an entertainment only and hardly gave preference to them in work. Though we used to enjoy the party, I don’t think this type of product selling will fetch more customers to company. We also used to visit various expo’s etc and that time one can get real sales pitching as everyone in a same industry are there, representing their products.

Actually it was a great experience out there but I was on the other side: being buyer, now after learning sales in a b school, I think we were not cruel at that time; it’s just the way people behave with sales people. So Happy journey!

Real sales expericence

Hi
What ever sir have taught in the class about sales ... I have applied and now i am going to achive the taregt .
While selling the product (Telecom Product and Service ) into 2 to 3 colleges i got the real life exposure and how to convience the customer about your product
and now i realize that product knowledge and competitior knowledge is how important

Recruitment and selection

Dear Participants,

As we had a lively discussion on the topic related to recruitment and selection. there where few student who could able to crack the web i hope the number will increase in the next class . yep the important part of any recruitnment process is HRSS . we keep listening abut the hiring plan some time even sales guy should have very good understanding of hiring people for the respective sales territory . later on the sequence follows is recrutining them . now a days community based portals are also facilitating right approach for the recruitment .communities like linked is revolutinising the approach of a sales guy as well as also indirtectly affecting the business of physical and web based job portals. right recruitment makes your life easy . at the end of the day people who are reporting to you need to be good becuase your sales target depends on their target and the important appraisal for you is to manage the resources. that's why once you grow in sales the process become more of a management level .

your job profile moves
sales execution --------sales coordination----------sales management . the magic of sales lies once you reach the third level. this is the space where you start loving sales . and ofcourse socialising in sales is very important , quantum of sales depends on people who use to execute the sales because of the network. your contact really matters a lot in sales. I hope you could able to crack the web for tommorows session

c ya


Ankush

sales organisation

dear participants,
sales organisation parameters are
1) line or staff or combination
2) according to the market
3)channel sales versus institutional sales
4) reporting
5) delegation
6)recruitment and selection of sales force
6)attrition
7)authoritative

I still find some people who have worked in the industry have not posted their threads. I Hope we wil continue with that professionalism which we keep discussing in the class and will get the post ASAP from them .

c ya tommorow at 8 30

Ankush

Real Challenge

Hi,
The real practical experience of life came when i joined Bhushan Steel limited as a post of GET.As per company norms days start with the one month of interaction program in every department.I got posted in production department and the real tough days when i faced a 20 years of work experience boss with hard rules and regulations in the first day of reporting in the department.With having the knowledge of all the OEM products what we processed in the plant and all the specifications and parameters of grade of hot rolled coiled used by our department we used to process the sheet into the ordered thickness by the customers.
The real experience of pre sales preparation process is realized when i went to attain the customer complain with my boss to Harsha Engineers which manufacture bearing cages.There it requires a lot of knowledge about the clients process and product line.It becomes important to compete with the competitor like Jindal Steel and Balaji steel and many other key players.A single production defects duing process can make a have loss of nearly Rs. 60000 per tonn.Harsha Engineer was a regular customer with an monthly order of nerly 300 tonns.the company gives authouriation to the person who goes for customer complain.When we reached to Harsha Engineers with a member of four person to handle the matrial defects which occur in our products.The defects was minutely the pitting defects which occur at the edge of sheet and light scratch marks.The problem could have solved simply by rewinding the coil in the mill with a force of 100 newton from the top roll as the defects was on the bottom but the Quality head of Harsha Engineer was not ready to accept.Every quality conytrol test was done by our team and we succeed in achieving the quality specification forwared by Harsha Engineers.Every persuation skills was applied by boss and lastly he understand the suitation and really you can guess that negotation(under the table) was the major factors on which we fail to concentrate and later he undersigned the quality check and ok stamp.
The persuasion and neogation skill is must for the person who a attain customer complain and represnt the company.As if he fail and lacks these two skill the material would be returned back to our warehouse which is treated as scrap by the company.It helps in increasing the liability of the company as the product returned is sold in scrap value.These was one of my first experience and i will continue to share more enough real life story that only sales dont matter but the person going for customer complain should should be well prepared to answer back and stay on one feet to satisfy the company objections.

Mukesh singh

Tough to Close

Hi all

This is about the time when I was working with Vodafone essar ltd in Orissa. I had a sales quota of 100 postpaid. As I was a new joinee I had a comparitibly less target to achieve but still then its difficult to achieve this target when you are the 7^th service provider in the state and as a matter of fact the postpaid is also new to the people and they have a huge fear regarding the bills.

One day, I met this gentle man named Mr. Jay, who was the owner of Harekrishna jewelers one of the  very reputed jewellery outlets in the city having two branches i.e. one at BBSR and the other at Balasore. He had come down to the Vodafone Store related to a problem of his Gujarat number. While my interaction I came to know about his business and approached him. My cold call got converted into a warm call when he was ready to give me an appointment. Then as per the time I proceeded for the meeting taking into account what all I can offer him like what plans, initial deposits, documents needed, or one can say all that was needed for me to know about my company and what I got to offer him. I had a thought he might ask for some premium number or a number that will be chargeable. So I took the necessary permissions from the concerned departments about the matter. My boss was kind enough to grant me the permission till the numbers costing me Rs 10,000. He also gave me the contact details of the concerned person regarding the availability of numbers and to have an idea of the premium numbers.

I met him and discussed about the all the plans. He had a lot of queries about the network stability, billing disputes, documentations and others. I had answered him with full honesty and avoided any kind of false commitments. I assured him about the 100% customer satisfaction and waited for his reply. He was planning to take around 30 connections which was again a huge number for me to start that month. He consulted all his employees and asked me come after 2 days and reply to the queries of the employees. I could now feel the hotness of the call. I went again and met all of them and answered every question of theirs. He now agreed to take the connections but as I expected he asked some special numbers for him and his partner Mr. Bijay. I was ready for it but he asked for a number which was more than Rs 10,000. I tried to convince him trying out many permutations and combinations and finally was successful.

I had to revisit their place to collect the documents and the cheque for the activation and also to deliver the sim cards. That was not the end of our relation; I offered him many other things later like blackberry and other higher plans to achieve my targets. I knew whenever I fell short of my target i tried him out and sold him. We are still in contact and my family enjoys the additional discount on shopping at their store.

I never knew what was I doing but now I know the sales process. Don't know how far I was in that process. U all can let me know. Give in Your comments and add to my knowledge.

Pruthiraj Pradhan

Cold calls part 2

I would like to share my opinion about the two opinions on Cold Calls given by Shanky. I think that both are correct, only thing that would differentiate between those two opinions will be work experience (period of time for which the person making calls had worked). In the initial phase, the 2nd opinion that talks about making large no. of cold calls, will be applicable, and later on when the person gets an experience the 1st opinion that talks about making smaller no. of cold calls will fall on the right place.
Guys i would really appreciate if you put forward your comments on this opinion.

POCKET MEIN ROCKET

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always best..

cold calls

Well I was just going through an article regarding 'Sales' in India when a question struck my mind which i think is worth sharing with you all.That article was about 'making Cold calls' about which I hope everyone has a fare bit of idea by now that what exactly it is and why it is a vital procedure in the selling process. There were 2 viewpoints...
1.Doing a large number of Cold calls is not important.What actually matters is you do a few but you give your best in those few calls and lets say you have a good conversion rate too.
2.Doing a large number of cold calls is actually very important if you are in Sales.There is no such rocket science involved in it.The only way sales work is that you keep adding stones in the pot, sometime soon the pot will get filled & the outcome will start from there. You just have to sustain that initial period of hard work, thats it.
Now the million dollar question arises...Which one is actually correct?Is it not possible to be consistent in all the calls you make?Does efficiency has anything to do with the number of calls you make in a day?
Switch your headlights on and throw as much light as possible..Everyone can share their view points..

sales organisation

sales organisation is one of the most crucial part of any sales management function. Duties and responsibilites and managing the the product as well as the customers are very important
few of the pointers that we have discussed are as follows
1) Understanding the sales organisation through proper induction is very important
it can be formal and it may be informal also
2) organisation culture also plays an important role in the organisation structure
3)the first mentor in the industry it may or may not be the same person to whom you are reporting . "Sincere people always get sincere mentor " for others sorry it is the blame game ...
we will talk more about sales organisation in tommorows lecture .. we have holistically develop the sales organisation function .. tommorow we will try to drill this further ahead
c ya


Ankush