Proudly Pinoy - Planters Development Bank

8
SME.COMmunity.PHilippines
Keep Your
Sales Team Sharp
Next to the product line, the underlying factor for business success is the
ability to penetrate the market with a well-trained and aggressive sales team.
Unfortunately, only a few manufacturing companies have such teams already
in place. These crack teams are usually found among the multinationals and the larger
well-established, all-Filipino firms.
The chief frustration of many company owners concerns the ability of their
sales force to meet the annual targets. Another serious issue is distress in
sales areas because of the high turnover rate among sales personnel.
Others owners are troubled by situations where the company is held
hostage by the sales team. In these instances, it is the sales people who dictate the
business targets of the company. And oftentimes, the sales team understates their
targets, leading to large opportunity losses for the firm. Growing the potential of the
sales areas through a business development program usually gets paid lip service in
these companies and the sales people, being familiar with the buying habits of their
accounts, are actually on the job only 15 days in the month.
Here are some pointers that can help you overcome internal obstacles, sharpen
your selling edge and get your company in fighting form.
Map Out the Operating Area
You need to do the basic work of counting
the retail outlets where your products
can be sold by channel type. You have to
map out an area by street, by barangay or
district in a micro condition. This allows
you to see the big picture by region. The
resulting business value of the area can
thus be better estimated through a sales
matrix which tells you where your supply
gaps are in each channel and how large
these gaps are.
You now can slowly develop the
game plan to cover all the outlets for a
prescribed period of time, through sales
blitzes done directly or through the local
area wholesalers and distributors. The
business value of the area can thus be
better estimated from the sales matrix.
The micro mapping effort then
generates a national snapshot of the
product’s true market potential. This is
a tedious process, but once done, the
database will be a valuable planning tool