Running Header: Sales Planning
SALES PLANNING
Students Name
11/9/2015
Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 2
PART ONE ................................................................................................................................................ 3
TASK One:............................................................................................................................................ 3
AIDA Model ................................................................................................................................... 3
Task Two ............................................................................................................................................. 5
Buyer behaviour in B2B vs B2C ....................................................................................................... 5
Task Three ........................................................................................................................................... 6
Role of sales team in market strategy: ........................................................................................... 6
PART TWO ............................................................................................................................................... 7
TASK One............................................................................................................................................. 8
TASK Two .......................................................................................................................................... 13
PART THREE........................................................................................................................................... 16
Importance of Recruitment .......................................................................................................... 16
Importance of selection process ................................................................................................... 16
Specifying the evaluation criteria for recruitment: ...................................................................... 17
Motivating the sales team: ........................................................................................................... 18
PART FOUR ............................................................................................................................................ 20
TASK One........................................................................................................................................... 20
Launching Foreign Operations ...................................................................................................... 20
TASK Two .......................................................................................................................................... 21
Exhibitions and trade fairs ............................................................................................................ 21
Conclusion: ............................................................................................................................................ 22
Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 22
Abstract
In this sales planning project we will first of all talk about the AIDA model and then will move on to
discussing and analysing various other sales strategies.
In order to represent the concepts of sales and advertisement strategies we have taken an IT firm as
a reference.
In the first task the AIDA model is discussed along with the sales perspective in B2B and B2C
consumers. Then we defined the selling strategies of the company and how to communicate it to the
sales team which is followed by the importance of recruitment and finally the strategy to enter the
foreign market.
PART ONE
TASK One:
AIDA Model
(Gert Assmus)
When we talk about advertising we can see that the world is getting continuously competitive.
In order to stay in business and excel you can’t just rely on an advertising team in your
company, what one has to do is to build an essence of advertisement in each and every sort of
communication happening between the company’s representatives and the clients. In order to
make this clearer a model called AIDA is used.
AIDA elements are:

Attention or attract
Needless to say that until and unless you don’t have the attention of the other
guy there is no point doing what you are doing. Each and every communication,
be it intra company or inter company, should first grab the attention of the other
party. For example, in the IT company which we have taken as example of the
sales person just goes and says that he has some products to offer might not
interest the client, what he can do is start with one of the biggest advantages that
the product can offer and build an urge inside the listener to pay close attention.

Interest
Ok, now you have the person’s attention, what you can do to retain his attention?
In order to retain his attention you must interest him, or the person must have
interest in listening to you. You may grab a person’s attention by using same
catch phrase again and again but when it comes to interest, it’s an all new game
and you must be prepared well in advance. The task is hard to pull off as you
must continuously be relevant and you have to stand out.

Desire
If you have been practising and your sales persons are good enough to
successfully execute the above steps you will find a need to build a desire among
the client. You may interest the client in the product you are offering but you
and client both knows that you are not the only one in the market offering the
product. And that’s when this immediate desire is required in the client and your
guy must be good enough to do that. We cannot allow the client to be rational
and think over any offering.

Action
Now if the sales person is lucky enough to clear the above stages. The sales
person should be ready with the next step that needs to be taken. In this case the
sales person is convincing the guy for the development of software so he should
be ready with the steps that need to be taken place next. This will ensure that
the work starts as soon as possible.
Promotional Mix
The 4 Ps’ of promotional mix are personal selling, advertisement, sales promotion and
public relations. This promotional mix is very much relevant as associated with the AIDA
framework as the framework also talks about advertising with the mode of sales person. And
this all is done with the mode of sales person.
Task Two
Buyer behaviour in B2B vs B2C
(Lynn E. Metcalf, 2004)
The objective of our company is to sell our product or service to the user. In the case of our
company the deliverables are software solution and that type of software are used by both a
normal person and also a company. When we are trying to sell the product to a company this
will fall under B2B sell and if the selling is happening to a user this will be called B2C selling.
The process of selling the product is the same as the company dealing with both customised as
well as standard. A lot of research has shown that there is a large difference between the
behaviour of a B2B client and a B2C client. There are many ways in which the difference can
be shown. These are the reasons why we normally see different B2B and B2C teams in the
same organisation. We will discuss the points and also how our sales team can use them:

Need Identification:
Need is something that is required for living of a person and in case of a
company it is something which is required for the operation of a company. The
needs of a company are purely needs i.e. they are something which have been
categorised as needs after a lot of thinking and the need is practical. But in case
of a normal consumer the need is very much influenced by advertising and
sometimes deviates from the definition of need. So the sales team should use
advertisement to influence the individual demands but normal methods for
business.

Specifying the product
In a company the team exactly knows what they want. They might as well have
a report about the required product. But this is seldom the case with an
individual buyer. He will have an idea about the requirement a price range and
some other details but not that much detailed specifications. So our team should
have a very sound knowledge of the specifications as they can understand
business demand and influence individual.

Decision making
Both the company and the individual take decision after doing a lot of research.
The company will probably have already done a lot of research with a whole
team working on a single project. So we can say that many people are involved
in the taking of decision. But in case of individual many people might be asked
but it is the person who will take the decision. So we can say that the sales
person should ensure that the product is liked by the person not matter what is
being said by others.
Task Three
Role of sales team in market strategy:
(Roland T. Rust, 2004)
While studying cost accounting we find the sales team under the domain of revenue point. It
means that the sales team has a direct impact on the profitability of the business. We will
discuss a few points should be taken as responsibility for each and every sales employee.

Segmentation
The marketing strategy team may very well design the marketing plan for the
company. But ultimately it is the role of the sales team to follow that strategy to
achieve the desired objective as they are the one who are doing the end job and
actually segmenting according to the requirements.

Strategy
Well this may seem odd but ultimately what is done on the ground is never the
same as discussed on the higher levels. On ground these are the sales persons
doing the real job, they may or may not follow the thought strategy. Even if they
follow the company’s strategy it is never easy to do so they must have some sort
of skill to pull that off. So they should be able to understand the strategy of the
company and be able to apply that.

Result
When you are given with the responsibility of jobs such as sales manager you
should be very result oriented. The responsibilities are always high. In case one
person is not able to achieve the target a backup must be ready such as one other
person is filling the gap for you.
PART TWO
TASK One
How to Sell?
(Paolo Guenzi, 2007)
Explanatory Notes:
In this section we discussed the process selling and how it is done. The company selected
belongs to IT industry. Now we will take an example and try to illustrate all the above points
using that example:

The very first step is like identifying the target audience. Or what we say in sales
language as segmenting. In this we shortlist the clients that we will target in future. We
narrow down to people who might be interested in our product now or in the future.

In the next step we gather enough information about the client to approach him in a
successful way. This includes gathering information regarding the buying habits or
preferences of the client.

Now we will approach the client with a well-planned strategy.

Using what we have learnt in the past we will try to give out first impression as effective
as possible. In order to do that the impression of ours should be matching the
preferences of our client.

While presenting it is very common for the client to ask questions. The sales person
being perfect will know almost every answer but sometimes they may ask questions
which are not bad, they may confuse the sales person. the person must be ready to
handle situations like this.

Once successfully going through all the above points what is left is just closing the deal
and following up.
TASK Two
PART THREE
Importance of Recruitment
(Graae, 2003)
Let’s discuss this by taking an example. All the companies which are big shots today,
be it Apple, Ford or any other company, were small at the beginning and their heads
were the ones doing the entire job. But as their business grew and they were no longer
able to handle the business on their own they started hiring. By hiring we mean they
started to give money to the people to do a job that once they themselves used to do.
The job which made them what they are today they gave it to someone else. The reason
for all that is just once and that was they couldn’t do the job themselves but the problems
were many as what was the ensure that they will be able to find the right people for the
job. This is where the importance of recruitment comes into play.
Recruitment is one of the most expensive and important job of a company. If the
recruitment goes wrong it can cause loss of a lot of time and money to the company.
Importance of selection process:
Selection process is meant to give the organisation an idea as which person is the most
talented among a particular group of people. For example, let’s say that our IT
Company is going to a college to hire a software engineer. Now, in an engineering
college there are a lot of people and to find a person who is suitable for the job as well
as smartest is very difficult job. They could not just interview each and every person.
In order to take care of this problem companies started conducting tests. But, using the
selection process the company can shortlist the candidates who are good for the job.
The company can take various types of processes to select the right candidate. They can
ask them to give tests of different types as psychometric or aptitude tests.
Specifying the evaluation criteria for recruitment:
In order to recruit a person the selection criteria must be very well defined. Because if
the selection criteria is not defined it will lead to a lot of confusion in selecting the right
candidate. We will discuss some of the common selection criteria which are important
from the perspective of our company and also talk about some of the indicators for the
same.
1. The candidate must have a very high request for legal standards. Sales
representative is the face of the company. If the sales person is not able to the
job right he will not only spoil his image but also the image of the company.
This is cause the client to never consider the company again. Now just imagine
what will happen if the client is not able to follow the legal standards. It will
create a very big problem for the company.
2. In the above point we discussed the importance of sales person in representing
the company. Previously the concern was legal respect but social responsibility
standards of the company. Each and every company has some seer of CSR
activities and the employee should respect the social view of the company and
if possible share some past record in similar activities. This will cause a
common ground between the company and the employee.
3. The employee must be satisfied and respect the level of compensation being
given to him. If he is not satisfied this may lead to him leaving the organisation
for a better offer. This is because some people get hired just because they want
to get in the business and they try to settle for a low salary. But then they try to
leave the organisation. This nature of the candidate can be checked by looking
at the track record of employee.
4. Now some of the niche criteria need to be accessed. In this case we are hiring a
sales representative for an IT firm. So the employee should have the following
skills:

Strong communication and convincing skills. We discussed in the AIDA
model that the sales representative is the face of the company and can
make or break a deal for forever. So he must have the right
communication skills to be able to express his idea and deal in front of
the client and not just express but also convince him that his company is
the right one for the job.

Along with the above he must possess a good knowledge of domain if
IT. He may face a client who is not much acquainted with IT work, but
he may also face someone who has good knowledge of the work. In the
latter case the knowledge of sales won’t work. He must have IT
Company.
Motivating the sales team:
Your company is doomed if the sales team is not motivated. The company must indulge
in activities to encourage the sales team to achieve the target. Following are some
suggestions to keep them motivated
1. Variable compensation is obviously the top way in this list as nothing motivates
more than the money. The company can give the sales person a cut for every
deal he closes. This will keep the employee encouraged and he will try to close
more deals even if he has successfully completed the target.
2. The company can offer them other schemes in the form of compensation such
as tickets for games holiday packages etc.
3. The company should make the performance visible for the other employees by
the use of linerboards and prizes etc. this can include competitions for daily key
performance indicators (KPI).
4.
The environment of the company should be encouraging as well. The person
should enjoy working at the place. This can be achieved by having gaming
tables and other entertainment stuff around.
5. There should also be a level of coordination among the higher and lower level
management. Everyone should feel free to talk to everyone.
PART FOUR
TASK One
Launching Foreign Operations
(Rose, 2007)
Leaders in any market are always cautious about entering in foreign market. This is because
the opportunities are great but so is the risk. The risk is because the new market operates in a
different way, what worked for the company in this market may not work in that market. The
people who made the company a success in this market may know nothing about that market.
So we will try to form a strategy for our company to go to the foreign market.

The very first thing that needs to be done is building a reasonable expectation and builds
a plan which follows the expectations. For this the company needs experts from not
only their main office but also from the country they want to go in. This is because they
should have a different perspective about the country they want to enter. The whole
plan should be very well thought after and should be communicated to the higher
authorities of the company.

We very well know that the company operates very different in different countries. For
that a very well understanding of the foreign market is an absolute necessity. The
company will need to set up an office even if it is not operating just to understand the
market behaviour. The unit’s responsibility will be to analyses the buying behaviour of
the market. Over all what we are trying to do is to check whether the plan that we made
in the first part of the process id feasible or not and if feasible then to what extent. And
only then the company will be able to check their understanding of the new market.

When the company hire they will never hire someone who may someday circumvent
the legal framework of the country. But while operating in other country the company
cannot be that much choosy. And this leads to miss hiring. As the company offers a
very attractive compensation while entering another market. The agents hired indulge
into unethical activities just to achieve the target and finish the job. This creates a very
big problem for the company as it’s just trying to enter the market and the sentiment
created is bad. So it turns out to be very difficult for the company to do anything again.

The last point contains the essence of all that we have discussed till time. The e
company should learn from the competition. They should keep a good eye on the
companies who have already entered and have faced all the problems like legal, ethical,
hiring and other issues. This will allow the company to make his entry in a very safe
manner. Yes the company won’t be having the first mover’s advantage but it surely will
have the safe game advantage.
TASK Two
Exhibitions and trade fairs
Exhibition and trade fairs are excellent ways of understanding the foreign market and also
analysing the customers. We will discuss about it through some points:

The exhibitions provide us with a great opportunity to understand the market as well
as observe the market behaviour. They also provide the company an opportunity to
show their products and see of the product is being accepted in the market.

Using those companies can directly interact with the cream crowd which it intends
to target in the future.

Directly entering in a country will be very costly for the company. And showing
huge presence is even more difficult and that gets added on with the expenditure on
advertisement and other promotional strategies. If the company is really serious
about entering a particular market it can spend some money in acquiring a great
stall and in the promotional strategies.
Conclusion:
In conclusion we can say that sales and advertisement plays a very important role in acquiring a
competitive edge in the industry. And we can also say that even while recruiting the sales knowledge
plays a very important role. In the last we learnt about foreign advertisement strategy.
Bibliography:

Gert Assmus, J. U. (n.d.). How Advertising Affects Sales: Meta-Analysis of Econometric Results .
Journal of Marketing Research.

Graae, B. J. (2003). The importance of recruitment.

Lynn E. Metcalf, C. R. (2004). Buyer‐Seller Relationships: An Application of the IMP Interaction
Model. European Journal of Marketing.

Paolo Guenzi, C. P. (2007). Relational selling strategy.

Roland T. Rust, K. N. (2004). Return on Marketing. Journal of Marketing.

Rose, A. K. (2007). Export Promotion. World Economy.