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Selling and sales management

The role of selling is continuing to change and evolve in response to dramatic moves in the way buyers and sellers interact. Individual knowledge, skills and abilities are still required, perhaps more than ever, but teamwork and technology are also vital ingredients in an effective organizational response to the needs and demands of customers. The salesforce have always been ambassadors for their firm, but in a turbulent business environment the information and persuasion role of salespeople is being absorbed into their relationship role. Salespeople must take responsibility for creating, developing and maintaining profitable relationships with their customers. This being so,. | CHAPTER 14 Selling and sales management BILL DONALDSON Introduction The role of selling is continuing to change and evolve in response to dramatic moves in the way buyers and sellers interact. Individual knowledge skills and abilities are still required perhaps more than ever but teamwork and technology are also vital ingredients in an effective organizational response to the needs and demands of customers. The salesforce have always been ambassadors for their firm but in a turbulent business environment the information and persuasion role of salespeople is being absorbed into their relationship role. Salespeople must take responsibility for creating developing and maintaining profitable relationships with their customers. This being so the need is paramount to focus on how to win develop and retain customers to achieve the marketing and sales objectives of the firm. This puts the spotlight once again on the role of selling in the marketing mix and on the management of sales operations. Sales operations are the revenue generation engine of the organization and thus have a direct impact on the success of the firm. In this chapter we consider how selling is changing and evolving. We examine the new role of salespeople and redefine the sales encounter in different exchange situations. We then address some of the key issues in managing the salesforce as they relate to marketing. The changing role of salespeople Consider the following statistics. In 1970 80 per cent of grocery products were sold to 1656 buying points the remaining 20 per cent to thousands of smaller units. By 1980 80 per cent of grocery products were purchased from only 656 buying points. Today 80 per cent is bought from only five major buying points Keynote 1998 . Less dramatic but similar trends can be found across industries and the effects on salespeople and on the efficiency of sales operations has been radical. These changes imply a new perspective for integrating sales and other forms of .