Chapter 8
THE SALES PLAN
SUMMARY
- How important is personal selling?
- The role of personal selling in the marketing mix
- A method for determining the correct number of salespeople required
- How to set quantitative and qualitative sales objectives
- How to improve sales force productivity
- How sales forces should be managed
- How to manage key accounts
- How to prepare a sales plan
- Exercises to turn the theory into practice
INTRODUCTION
Personal selling has an important strategic role to play in communicating between a company and its customers. To have a chance of success, management must be able to answer the following kinds of question:
- How important is personal selling?
- What is the role of personal selling in the marketing mix?
- How many salespeople do we need?
- What do we want them to do?
- How should they be managed?
- Should we treat key accounts differently?
These and other questions will be considered in this chapter as important determinants of the sales plan. However, those readers who believe they already know enough about communications, pricing and distribution planning, and who are principally concerned with the preparation of a strategic marketing plan, can go straight to Chapter 12.
HOW IMPORTANT IS PERSONAL SELLING?
Most organizations had an organized sales force long before they introduced a formal marketing activity of the kind described throughout this text. In spite of this fact, sales force management has traditionally been a neglected area of marketing management.
Personal ...
