Salesforce promotion is a marketing strategy where promotion of sales is directed towards the sales people. It is scheme focused toward motivating the sales personnel’s to put in more efforts for raising the sales volume, increasing distribution, promoting newer and seasonal products, booking more orders, selling more and more deals to resellers, developing prospects lists, and boosting up the morale and enthusiasm of these personnel’s. Salesforce promotion cover all of those activities that are meant to prepare the sales representatives well such that they perform their duties with high efficiency and give better results. It includes sales meeting and manual, film, slide shows, training programmes and sales presentations.
Salesforce comprising of all sales people perform key activities for company as they are one who work towards increasing the demand for products. Proper guidance and training of these people is must to ensure that they put their efforts in right direction. The role of salesforce to a large extent is dependent upon how company sell its products, either directly to final customers or to other businesses. Under consumer sales, the salesforce simply needs to take and close orders. They are not required to create product demand, since demand for product is already been created via advertising campaigns and promotional activities. On the other hand, salesforce takes on completely different role under business-to-business sales. They may be required to perform a variety of functions such as prospecting for new clients and qualifying leads, negotiating prices, explaining about company and its products, closing orders, servicing accounts etc.
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Objectives of Sales Force Promotion
The objectives of sales force promotion are as follows: –
Raising the sale volume: Salesforce promotion plays an effective role in raising the sale volume of business enterprises. It motivates and boost the morale of sales people to perform their work efficiently. When sales team reach out to more and more people and convince them for brand products, then this ultimately results in raising the sales volume for company.
Introducing newer product: Companies need to work hard for popularizing their newly launched products among target market. They need to convey people about its innovative features, advantages and other functions. All these functions are performed efficiently by sales force of company who interact with customers and convey them each and every detail regarding new product.
Bringing down the selling costs: Salesforce promotion enable business organizations in reducing their overall selling costs. Running the promotional campaigns on media and other platforms require huge cost to be incurred by company. Salesforce perform promotional activities for business in economical way and cover large number of customers. They carry out activities for bringing in large leads to business and avoids unnecessary selling costs.
Offset competitive promotions: Every business should take care of its competitor positions, in order to survive in a highly competitive market. Salesforce helps in performing the promotional activities efficiently and covers large number of people. This enable business in maintaining the competitive position in market containing large number of competitors.
Raising the brand awareness: A wide awareness about brand and its products among the target customers is must in order to bring sufficient sales. Salesforce works actively in popularizing the brand in market, convey details about brand, its products and specialities to people. When brand awareness gets increased, its sales volume too rises eventually.
Techniques of Salesforce Promotion
Following are the techniques used commonly for salesforce promotion: –
Sales Contests
Sales contests are the type of contest where sales target met by each sales people are evaluated to find out the one who has achieved the highest sales. These contests are organized by the manufacturer. The sales people with exceptional target achieved is provided with rewards. Sales contest are meant to motivate salesforce to bring in more and more sales volume. A particular quota is fixed for each sales individual and the one who exceeds that quota with specified margin are provided with cash awards or certificate.
Sales Meeting
Sales meeting are meetings organized for sales people from one area, region or district. They are held frequently like once in a month, once in two months or every quarter. It is considered as one of the effective ways of educating sales people. Sales meeting brings in together the sales people from distinct territories of nation. They are mainly focused on enhancing the product knowledge and boosting morale of sales people. It can be termed as varying mixture of business and pleasure.
Demonstrations
Demonstration involve showcasing each and every detail regarding product. The demonstration of technical product clarifies multiple points to salesman that are useful when queries are made by prospects to the salesman. This increases the salesman confidence level while dealing with prospects. It is very useful technique in case of durable goods.
Sales training manuals
Training materials such as learning books, flip charts, visual aids, manual etc are of utmost importance to sales people. The sales manual can be short or long that is dependent upon the type of products produced and sold by business organization. These manuals contain information regarding products, their application, prices, manufacturing process, sales techniques etc. Few company too have inhouse journal providing details about company programme, new policies and product, research activities, promotion, awards, etc.
Bonus to Salesforce
Bonus to salesforce means providing the sales people with bonus on exceeding their fixed targets. A sales quota is fixed for every salesman, and when they exceed this fixed quota then bonus is awarded to them for their exceptional performance. In order to get more premiums, the salesman will try to sell higher quantity of goods.
Packets with promotional materials
This scheme involves offering promotional materials to salesman that are fulfilling the certain targets. The promotional materials more commonly used by companies include paid vacation within or outside country, merit certificates, medals, cash or kind. These materials can be further transferred to customers.
