Sales
1. A sale is an intangible activity. It is responsible for monetary and financial activities of the company
2. A sale is the driving force of an organization. Sales helps an organization in revenue generation. The sales figures tell the top management that weather they have crossed the breakeven point of their investments or not. Based on it they can decide weather company is running under losses or in profit i.e. ROI is being crossed or not.
Some of the important terms in sales
1) Lead file: it is the database given to the sales personnel which consists of contact details of his company’s clients. The list consists of
Name of concerned person
His cell number/office landline number & E-mail Id.
Company address, website.
Communication report ( interactive notes by sales executive with the clients)
A lead file is either created by sales personnel or is given by the company herself to help their sales employees to generate sales.
A lead files is 3 types
Cold Leads: these are the dead lead which are gone dead and has very less scope for closures. These are mainly untouched leads also. These leads have not been discussed or worked on since long time or has gone cold due some reasons like financial crunches, shut shop etc..
Warm Leads: these are those leads which are on verge of closure and are on final discussions like price negotiation, payment options, installments etc. these leads are manly forecasted and makes pipe lines of sales executives.
Hot leads: these are immediate closures. Here the client is actively ready to do the payment and is willing to buy the product/services immediately. Such kind of leads are mainly inbound leads where an client himself calls and enquire about the product and services and willingly goes for is purchasers.
Note: The process of converting cold leads into warm leads is called as sales pipeline generation.
2) A sales pipe line is nothing but group of warm and hot leads which an sales personnel carries for their quarters.
A sales person need to have following
Weekly pipeline
Monthly pipe line
Quarterly pipe line
Spill over: these are warm leads which could not get closed in last quarter, but there are some bright chances that it may get closed in this upcoming quarter.
Bottle neck: these are special cases kept infront of your teams. The special cases are on verge of closure but due to some reasons are not able o get close. By taking suggestions a sales person walks ahead and tries to close that deal.
Corporate process of doing sales
It can be divided in to 2 parts
1. Pre sales activities
2. Post sales activities
Presales is a process or a set of activities normally carried out before a customer is acquired, though sometimes presales also extends into the period the product or service is delivered to the customer. [Defined in winkepedia.com]
In a typical sales cycle the stages are
1. Contact
2. Lead / Suspect
3. Prospect / Opportunity
4. Customer
Pre sales activities are series of activities which begins with contacting the customer and ends at the closure. In some cases pre sales also provides some initial or transitional support to post sale.
General pre-sales structure or pattern is
1. Lead generation
2. Building pipeline[ following the lead by cold calling]
3. Problem identification
4. Solution Preparation
5. Providing product pamphlets & company presenation for product understanding and company introduction.
6. Proposal with Pricing
7. Negotiation
8. Payment Mode
9. Legal documentation like warranty, guaranty, post sale services of product etc.
10. Product Selling.
Eg.Being an ex employee of monsterindia let me explain how we do pre selling in monster
• Cold calling daily from the lead file[ minimum cold calls which we do in a day are 65 calls and minimum talk time which are suppose to do is of 180 minutes]
• Building weekly sales pipe line.
• Building 2 minimum opportunities daily which are likely to get close by weekends.
• Understanding the problems of our clients like what is obstacle in buying our products and providing them solutions accordingly.
• Giving them a free trail or web-ex online demonstration so that they understand the online products of monster.com
• Sending them marketing documentation, so that they can understand what monster is and what all products monster has and accordingly they can select the product which they think best suited to them in their business.
• Once they select the products, we customize the package for them.
• On getting agreed we send them a proposal having pricing (with 10.22 taxes included).
• Then if client asks for negotiation, the negotiation round goes, and we give the best discounted prices available with us.
• If customer agrees on everything, then we send them a legal agreement stating what facilities our clients are getting after buying our product and services. It will also will tell what the actual price of the product and services was and how much amount he is giving in taxes.
• The agreement also bears installments durations stating the clients need to pay on those durations and if he fails his services will be stopped immediately once he crosses the date of payment.
• Once payment is done, the client becomes our customer and the sale is made.
These are the methods which we generally follow in telesales of monsterindia.com Hyderabad. As per the interview taken from Senior Sales Executive Lavanya B .[2007-till Date], 6th April 2010
Post Sales:
Post sales is the effort that companies and sales people go through after the sale to ensure that the customer is happy and build future business.
They are these activies which a sales exectives need to follow with his custumers like timely calling for servicing of products servincing, proving informations to the clients if some ad on services being added to the newly brought product. Providing good training so that client can use the product easily.
Let’s take an example of monsterindia.com
Suppose a resume database for 1 yr is sold to abc pvt ltd. So post sales activities for the client
1. An account manager of that region will be assigned to the client who will be direct mode of contact if any problem client faces
2. A training executive will be assigned to the client who will train him how to use the product and best ways to find the correct resumes.
3. A Client relation executive will be assigned to him who will send him the type of resumes he is looking for, if he has posted job postings [online ads].
4. The account manager will be the problem solver, he will assist the client and help him in finding the correct resumes, market surveys’ etc. he will be a relationship manager to him. He will be responsible for future sales between monster and newly acquired client.
Sales Person:
If sales organization is a car and sales being its fuel then sales person is the driver of that that car.
Sales personals are the driving force of any organization as they are the key people who have the responsibility to find the target segment where the company can sell its product. They represents their company to the people of the targeted segment. According to me a sales professional must possess following things
1. Good communication skills
2. Active listening, a sales person must be very good listener
3. Very spontaneous
4. Well dressed.
5. Multilingual, and must know the local language very well.
6. Should have good convincing skills.
7. Very patient
8. Ethical. (loyal to his clients)
9. Very well organized and punctual.
10. Good in time management and should be a multi-tasker.
11. Must be ready for or die situation.
Sales clock
sales clock is a mechanism which represents the sales cycle of the sales executive. A sales cycle is taken in annual terms.
Similarities between sales clock and regular clock
Mech clock sales clock
• 12-3 [1 quarter of 24 hrs] jan-march[q1, of 12 months]
• 3-6[2nd “] aprl-june[q2]
• 6-9[3rd “] july-sept[q3]
• 9-12[4th “] oct-dec[q4]
Hypothesis of sales clock
Components of sales clock
1) hands
A sc has 3 hands
a) Sales pipe line as second hand
b) Sales forecasting as minute hand
c) Sales number as hour hand
2) Sales Alarm
3) Sales Time
Explaination of sales clock and its comparision with mechanical clock
1) Sales pipe line : As second hand of ticks continuously similarly a valid lead must be added to sales pipeline , stronger the pipe line stronger are the chances of getting a sale or closure. Therefore we can say that
Sales pipeline ά sales closure
2) Sale-forecasting as minute hand: as we know that 1 round of second hand makes 1 minute, i.e. in 1 minute we have 60 second, so let us assume that if in each second we could produce one lead in lead file resulting in addition of 60 leads in an lead file of an sales executive.
Note: the leads being added are warm leads which are used for strengthening the lead and pipe line both.
• The stronger and valid lead file the stronger the sales pipe line. That is we can say that
Leads ά pipeline.
• Stronger the valid lead file stronger the pipe line.
• We can also say that
Valid leads (warm leads) ά sales closures
3) Sales numbers: Every sales person’s performances is noted in his sales files. His performance based on sales numbers he had achieved (target achieved, over achieved or did not achieved).
Now, calculation part
60 sec----------1 min
60 min -----1 hour
Suppose in 1 minute or 60 seconds 60 warm leads commining in; so in 1 hr or 60 minutes 60*60=3600 leads coming in.
That is in 1 hour if we could generate 3600 warm leads out of which 60 are forecasted leads then the possibilities for getting closures increases more in 1 single day.
We can again say that
Sales numbers ά pipeline
Or
Lead file ά pipeline ά sales number or closures
4) Sales Alarm
When the pre sales activities are done and sale is closed , at that time an alarm or popup or confirmation bell rings to record the sale number of the sales executive and gets added to his sales file.
It’s that time at which the sale comes in.
5) Sales Time: it’s the average time taken by sales personnel to close the deal or complete the total annual target [target of 1 yr that is 4 quarter]
ST Annual = Time taken by sales executive/12 months
ST Quarterly= Time taken by Sales executive/Quarters
Example for quater1
ST (q1) = T1/q1
ST (Yr) = T (12)/q (12)
General formula for calculating sales time and sales target
Sales Time: Q1+Q2+Q3+Q4.
Sales Target: Q1`+Q2`+Q3`+Q4`
CALCULATION OF SUCCESS RATIO OF SALES PERSON
By watching this sales clock which is mechanically controlled & governed by the sales managers and top sales professionals at higher grade the success ratio of sales person is calculated.
For e.g.
Balanced Sales Person:
Q= Q1` at (q1) +Q2` at (q2) +Q3` (q3) +Q4`at (q4)
Where,
Q = Annual Sales Target.
Q1`=Quarter 1 Sales Target
Q2`= Quarter 2 Sales Target
Q3`= Quarter 3 Sales Target
Q4`= Quarter 4 Sales Target
q1, q2, q3&q4 are the respective times of the quarters Q1`,Q2`,Q3`&Q4`.
Now let the total annual target be 1 that is Q=1. It means that sales person has to complete 0.25 of his target every quarter & if he is able to do it then he will be called as successful sales person. i.e.
Q=.0.25+.25+.25+.25=1
That’s equation is a balanced equation that’s the given targets are completed by the sales person.
Such kind of sales person is called as a balanced or average sales person (Q=1) who just completes his targets. But suppose Q≠1,
Then 2 things can happen
Q<1 Q>1
Condition 1 when Q<1, then sales person is called as a failure i.e. is sales clock is lagging behind & is not but working properly. Sales person following under this criteria are called as weak sales person Condision2: but if Q>1 then the sales clock is ticking very good as the in this condition extra sales are coming which shows our hypothesis of generating more leads and able to convert those leads into prospects and closures is working due to which our sales clock is running fast and alarms are triggered before the completion sales time resulting more sales and profits to the company. Such sales persons are the driving force of the sales organization. They can be called as Sales Leaders.
So we can say that a sales organization has 3 categories sales people:
Week Sales Person: They are the people who are failing in meeting their sales targets & require attention by the higher authorities to understand why their clock & sales alarm not working properly.
Average Sales Person: They are the sales people who just work for completing their job. They never fail in their work but looses the zeal once reaches or complete their target as they looses their focus. These people need proper guidance and regular monitoring so that they get improvised and comes in the category of sales leaders.
Sales Leaders: They are the top category sales person for them sales is like and passion. They give their 100% or even more to achieve their targets. These people never sit idle and keep generating their pipelines and focus lots of time in Sales Pipeline & Sales Forecasting technique. These people need appreciations and authorities to take decisions which make them more motivated to perform better then the best. It’s always advised that sales leaders must be made mentors for weak sales person so that they can work out properly and comes out for a solution beneficial for both of them & also for the team.
