The Sales Management Project Business Essay

What Is The Most Suitable Way to: Recruit, Motivate & Evaluate Your Sales Force? Compared to What You Saw In the Company Interviewed. Markets all around the world usually contain different kinds of organizations that sell wide range of tangible goods ‘ products ‘ and intangible goods ‘ services ‘ to different consumer segments that have wide range of tastes. In order to let these wide ranges of goods attract consumers’ attention to satisfy their needs, the message must be conveyed to them in the correct way to help in attaining organization’s goals and objectives through selling these products. This will be through the sales force of the organization, which their main responsibility in the organization is to sell these tangible and intangible products to satisfy consumers’ needs and wants. (Princeton University, 2006)

As sales force teams are one of the most precious teams that any organization cannot exist without, they must be recruited and selected with full care. Through an effective sales force, many sales will be generated which will lead to high sales turnover resulted in the business. Moreover, selecting and recruiting effective sales people may cause the business high costs, so in order to make value for the money the organizations will pay, sales people that will be selected must be provided with high skills in order in order to turn these costs back in terms of surplus. Finally, motivating sales force is an important aspect to set the success of recruitment of the sales force. (Jobber & Lancaster, 2009)

In order to recruit superb sales forces, it’s required that a job description must be settled for sales men in addition to the personnel specification for this job. Also, recruitment sources and the tools that will be needed to communicate targeted candidates are required through the recruitment process. After that, application forms that are valuable must be designed creatively that will help in gaining additional information and will make it easier on the sales managers to select the small amount of candidates that will be interviewed. Then, the short list of the chosen candidates will be interviewed. Finally, that last phase of recruitment phase will be done through different psychological tests beside several roles playing to finalize the choice. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitment and Selection, 2009)

Hiring disasters might appear if salespeople did not know what task they are required to do and did not know how to do it and in order to prevent this fatal mistake, human resources manager should hold the full responsibility deciding what they are looking for in terms of job tasks before they begin searching for candidates. They start to list the Start jobs’ responsibilities that will help in making the next part of the first step in recruitment process which is the forming the personnel specification. (Palazzo & Kleiner, 2002)

The job description content must include the following:

Job Description Elements Information About Every Element

Title Of The Job The name of the job, which is in this case a salesperson or sales representative. (Jobber & Lancaster, Selling And Sales Management, 2009, p. 387)

Job Department The Department that the Job is related to, for instance, marketing department. (Lindenberger, 2011)

Reports to… This point demonstrates the person this Job’s Person will be reporting to. For example, The sales representative will be directing to his/her sales manager. (Lindenberger, 2011)

Overall Responsibility It includes what the job’s actual responsibility is.

Sales representative’s responsibilities include selling to consumers, build consumer relationships and loyalty, do the after-sales service, and provide consumers with information feedback of company, products, services, and even the market they exist in as an organization. (Jobber & Lancaster, Selling And Sales Management, 2009, p. 387)

Practical Needs That include the degree of understand ability of the products that will be sold by the organizations to the consumers. Salespersons should understand this correctly to be able to sell the products they are going to sell. (Jobber & Lancaster, Selling And Sales Management, 2009, p. 387)

Geographical Areas Covered The job description must include the areas this job will be places in. For instance, this sales person in the organization will be in Downtown’s Shop to sell the product. (Jobber & Lancaster, Selling And Sales Management, 2009, p. 387)

Degree of self-rule It’s the way the one who will be working for this job will be able to rule and set a program for him/her self. For instance, always making creative ideas as a salesperson to keep consumers interested in the products fro a long time. (Jobber & Lancaster, Selling And Sales Management, 2009, p. 387)

Based on this job description, a Personnel Specification will be built. It is mainly based on the required skills that an employee must have that will help him/her complete the required tasks successfully of the required job. Also, it includes the desired educational levels for the candidates that will be hired, their experiences in training as well as their hobbies and what they are good at. It is way important in the sales era, as without expert and creative skills the organization might be at a disaster. (Jobber & Lancaster, Selling And Sales Management, 2009, p. 387)

The Personnel Specification may include:

Personnel Specification Elements Information About Every Element

Physical Needs It includes the physical approaches, the way the employee talks, and his/her body language. In the salesperson’s case it is one of the most important factors in personnel specification because without them, the whole business might face risk of failure as sales era is the important factor of the business’s success. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitement and Selection, 2009)

Achievements It includes what the candidate has achieved from educational levels, different experiences, and the successes done. For instance, a secondary certificate level, a business degree marketing major certificate and so forth. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitement and Selection, 2009)

Aptitudes and Qualities The Ability to communicate with others, sociable or not that is one of the most successful factors in the sales area in organizations, because without communication skills there will be no customer relationships. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitement and Selection, 2009)

Disposition How the candidate will handle the desired responsibility, and the level of maturity he/she has and the intelligence to solve problems like having an angry customer, for example, the salesperson should know how to deal with these kinds of situations. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitement and Selection, 2009)

Interest The interests that the person that will be hired has. For instance, the hobbies the salesperson is good at. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitement and Selection, 2009)

Personal Circumstances The martial status of the candidate is mainly in this element. For instance, single, married, and so forth. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitement and Selection, 2009)

These factors as well as using them in recruiting employees it will be also useful through the interviews that will be done to the candidates at the selection process that will add value while they are evaluated. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitement and Selection, 2009)

When the job description and the personnel specification is settled by the executives and human resource managers, the sources of recruitments and the way they will communicate with candidates must be chosen in order to complete the second step of the recruitment process.

Recruitments could be through different methods, such as, internal and external recruiting, college and educational establishments, competitors, wide variety of industries, and unemployed forces. Through using internal candidates this will be useful as the candidates will be previously oriented with the organization’s information and its products, and also they might be familiar with the existing customers which will help in knowing what might satisfy them and keep them loyal and will know also how to attract other consumers as a sales force. Moreover, they will be intimate with the organization’s atmosphere not like new external employees that are coming from outside the organization and might understand the organization mission or vision which will result in selling the products in the wrong what which will result in having low profit or sales. However, these external employees have a big advantage and benefit to the organization which is entering new creative ideas from outside even information could be gained about competitors which will help in gaining competitive advantage in sales departments. In addition to the internal and external recruitment, educational establishment could benefit in the recruitment process as it will help in recruiting professional employees that will add to the success of the organization and will improve from its reputation from colleges ‘ fresh graduates ‘ of recruitment agencies. Competitors’ employees may be also recruited in the organization as it will help in reducing the risk of competition, but sometimes it could be risky as some information may be revealed in front of the competitors ‘ no privacy ‘ who might cause some complications especially if the product sold is similar to the competitors. Furthermore, hiring employees from other industries or unemployed people would be also useful for recruiting effective sales representatives in the organization. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitment and Selection, 2009)

In order to choose the required employees ‘ sales representatives – effectively, especially in the sales era, you need to have an effective communication tool in order to reach targeted employees needed for the job, and this is mainly through advertisements in newspapers, recruitment agencies and so forth. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitment and Selection, 2009)

After the previous two steps comes the third step which is forming the pool of candidates application forms. These Application forms are mainly documented data that will help in viewing the candidates’ backgrounds and other information about them. Also, one of the main benefits of these application forms is that they will help on discovering information about the applied candidates for instance, their grammar, inability or ability of spelling, and the ability to follow instructions, and this will help the organization and the human resource department to make the list of candidates that will be suitable to go through final stages of recruitment and selection process and to be chosen as a sales representatives for the organization. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitment and Selection, 2009)

The application forms mainly include personal information about the candidates ‘ age, full name, gender -, also they include educational information, and employment history, for instance, what school did the candidate went to, what certificates and grades he/she achieved at school or university, and what jobs the candidate was hired, or trained in it before applying for the required job. This will be some how important as the organization will know their sales history and if what they achieved from sales achievements, how many commissions he/she took throughout the employment history and so forth, For male candidates, application forms might include military services that they served throughout their life. Moreover, records of the favourite sports, hobbies and even other interests will be included in the application forms. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitment and Selection, 2009)

When small amount ‘ short list ‘ of candidates are chosen among pool of candidates, interviews stage appears, in which a live conversation happens between the manager and the candidate for the purpose of collecting information needed to evaluate that person compared to the job he/she is applying to. As a sales manager, he/she will evaluate the candidates according to their physical appearance ‘ the manner, the fitness, the way of speech -, their achievements ‘ the education levels, the qualifications and skills learned -, and also the maturity and the way to hold a responsibility, because without having these factors as they are expected this might lead to a bad reputation to the organization as a whole. (Management Style Guide)

Interviewing have different types, it could be one-to-one conversations, or an open discussion between the managers and the small amount of candidates chosen. In these two types of interviewing questions could form closed conversation ‘ in which the manager will expect the answers of the candidate – , form an open ended conversation ‘ transforming the interview to be just like a daily conversation which somehow could benefit a lot in getting to know the candidate better. In all these different types, the interviewer should maintain a good and friendly response in the interview to the candidate; also he/she must make the candidate relaxed and be interested in listening what the candidate in front of them is saying. (Dessler, 2011)

The final step in the recruitment and selection process for the managers to do in recruiting the salespeople is the process of doing enhancement selection supports, for instance several tests other than the interviews, like the psychological examinations and the role playing methods. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitment and Selection, 2009)

Through these selection supports, the evaluation provided from the interview step will be valid by accurate measurements and outcomes. The first aid that is used is the physiological examinations. This kind of examinations usually constructs the individuals emotional and cognitive functioning that will help on determining if the person will be psychologically fitting the job required or not. In the sales representative case, it is very important to assess such tests as it will be revealing many things from the candidates characters that will help in seeing if that person will be able to handle different sales situations with consumers or not. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitment and Selection, 2009)

Unfortunately, this kind of testing could be misleading and ineffective as the candidates may cheat in the tests’ answers, and do not follow the instructions carefully which may turn a big disaster to the organization and wrong sales force might be hired. Moreover, these psychological tests mainly measure the human self interest not the sales ability, which may recommend hiring the wrong people for the job required. In addition to this, these examinations main aim is testing the psychological characteristic and features of individuals, which will not benefit or assure the organization that this candidate will change the sales curve from low one to a high and successful one. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitment and Selection, 2009)

In addition to the psychological tests, comes the role playing method in which it is several scenes prepared from the real life situations that the job’s worker will be in during his work in the organization. This will make the candidate oriented with what will happen in the actual job and also as managers they will know if this candidate will cope with changes and be able to solve problems or not in his era. According to the sales department, this kind of test is way important as it will tell the sales manager if the representative chosen will be able to deal with the consumers and increase the sales in the organization or not. Also, it will reveal if the candidate is precious enough or not for the job. However, the role playing techniques is connected with the present state and do not include any of sales experiences to the candidates nor the long-term relationships with consumers in which is also a huge problem especially when the organization have few loyal customers to take care of. (Jobber & Lancaster, Recruitment and Selection, 2009)

Through Summarizing the recruitment and selection idea all up, in my opinion, it is apparently important in determining the long-term life of the organization which means that without having strong based and customer oriented employees and sales representatives the company might face many struggles and complications in the market resulting to serious disasters.

After the sales force has been successfully recruited and selected, organizations must always maintain the motivation of the sales team to make sure that the sales rate will be on an increase and high improvement. Thus, the motivation of sales force or employees is a demanding mission. (Jobber & Lancaster, Motivation & Training, 2009)

Motivation is the power that gives the aspiration to work hard in a specified job. As a result of this aspiration, the reaction will be a high benefit to the organization. For instance, by motivating sales force this will help in increasing sales rate that the organizations have that will result in an organizations huge success. As well as increasing organizations benefits, having motivated employees and sales force will increase creativity and improve the way they attract consumers to the organizations’ products. Moreover, motivation will help the sales team to have more relaxed attitude towards working in the organization which will result in the appearance of less tension. Finally, internal relationship between organizations members ‘ sales team ‘ will be found which adds to the reputation of the organization in front of the customers. (Eisner, 2011)

Taking motivation as a science, it was presentenced by many psychologists all over the history through different kinds of theories, for instance, Maslow’s Hirearchy Of Needs, Herzberg’s Theory, Vroom’s expectancy theory, Adam’s inequity theory, Likert’s sales management theory, and the Churchill, Ford, and Walker model of sales force motivation. (Jobber & Lancaster, Motivation and Training, 2009) According the sales department subject which is the main discussion of this analysis, there will be focus on only three theories the Vroom’s Expectancy Theory, Likert’s sales management theory, and the Churchill, Ford, and Walker model of sales force motivation. (Jobber & Lancaster, Motivation and Training, 2009)

Vroom’s Expectancy Theory:

Firstly, the Vroom’s expectancy theory mainly wraps around the idea of putting expectations for sales force success based upon the endeavour they put in the product. Vector Vroom shows the importance of motivation through testing the motivation aspect from the perspective of why people choose specific actions to be done. As Lee mentioned in her journal,

‘It provides answers in part to the question of ”how can we motivate customers to use our products?”’ (Lee, 2007)

This theory mainly wraps around three main mechanisms, Valence, expectancy, and Instrumentality. The valence demonstrates the worth that is positioned upon an exacting reward given to the sales man; it differs from a person to another. For instance, commission may satisfy an employee while the others may not feel motivated with it nor affected. (Jobber & Lancaster, Motivation and Training, 2009). In addition to the Valence comes the expectancy, it can be defined as the exact assumption of the probability of succeeding and achieving a high performance. This assumption is mainly based on the employees’ personalities and confidence rate that he/she has. Taking sales representative as an example, when the sales representative expects to make high sales rates today, his/her expectancy will be on the peak. (Lee, 2007) Also, The last component which is the instrumentality, shows that motivation will happen or a result will be outcome through certain behaviour from his/her own point of view. For instance, a specific sales person will achieve high sales rates if he/she was promoted. (Lee, 2007)

As it is shown in the following diagram, if the sales representative had a high expectancy ‘ work hard to get high sales rate ‘ followed by a high instrumentality ‘ make high sales to get a commission better than your colleagues -, and a high valence ‘ high commission is important for increasing the standard of living. This will have a high level of motivation to the sales force which will improve the sales era in the organization. (Jobber & Lancaster, Motivation and Training, 2009)

Likert’s Sales Management Theory:

In addition to the Vroom’s expectancy theory, another psychologist came ‘ Rensis Likert ‘ and made a theory especially for motivating sales force and not like any other general motivation theory – Maslow’s Hirearchy of Needs, Herzberg’s Theory, Vroom’s expectancy theory, Adam’s inequity theory ‘ by other psychologists. (Jobber & Lancaster, Motivation and Training, 2009) Likert’s research was mainly wrapping around different personality traits that demonstrate sales person’s performance in his/her job. In addition to this, as he mentioned in the analysis of the methods of conducting sales meetings, the sales managers in an organization should plan an advanced goals for their sales team, and try to always have a discussion with the sales force and help in overcoming all the complications through the sales meetings which will lead to a high motivation position between the sales force. (Jobber & Lancaster, Motivation and Training, 2009)

The Churchill, Ford, and Walker Model of Sales force Motivation:

Finally, one of the most important motivation theories is the theory demonstrated through Churchill, Ford, and Walker model of sales force motivation. This model mainly demonstrates that when the sale’s person is motivated, he/she will attain a high selling effort that will result in attaining high performance in selling. As a result of this high performance, rewards will be awarded and satisfaction will occur, also, respect will arise. These rewards that could motivate sales force could be financial incentives, promotions, or sales contests. By doing this, it will lead to a high rate of motivation that could lead to achieving the organizations’ goals which is an increase in the sales rates. (Jobber & Lancaster, Motivation and Training, 2009)

Throughout the working process, sales force should be evaluated in order to maintain the organizational performance and to make sure that high sales rates will be achieved. By having a continuous sales force Performance evaluation, this will make sure that the sales activities are in parallel with the organizational goals and objectives that were settled by the executives. Also, it helps to renew the sales department’s plan that ensures that the sales force are always motivated and doing their work effectively. (IBS Center for Management Research Corporation, 2010)

An appropriate evaluation could be through several methods. Sales representatives could be provided with feedback on their performance, and how they should continue or improve their performance through the performance appraisal. This tool benefits in gaining a high competitive advantage of the competitors down in the market. Also, evaluation could be done through observations by comparing the real life performance of the sales force, this mainly varies from a market to another and from a sales group to another. In addition to these previous tools there is also, Several tools such as, critical incident appraisal, work-standards method, family of measures and so forth. (IBS Center for Management Research Corporation, 2010)

In conclusion, several evaluation methods have been over the centuries, and they are completing each other as there isn’t a specific one the is recommended from the other. All in the end lead to evaluating the sales force to maintain the job performance and the organization’s reputation down in the market and in front of competitors.