How to implement the sales force in a small company?

If you have a small business, a commercial premises that as a business you sell a product or offer a service, the Sales force It is an essential seasoning for you to carry out your business.

There is no company that, no matter how small, is not interested in knowing what it is about, how to implement it, what is its structure, how to organize it and if you have an example it will be much better for you because you can adapt that example to your own business, then below you will know all this and much more so that your small business is on the road to success.

Sales force for the success of the company

  1. The Sales force It is what will lead you to achieve the success of your company, because if you are looking for good results you will find them in customer satisfaction and where does that satisfaction come from? Precisely of that force that can be intangible but that you notice with the increase in sales and customers.
  2. In any case, it is not as simple as selling blind with the sole objective that the company obtains as many orders as possible at the cost of lower prices to meet that objective, which will of course be short-term.

But from the point of view of a marketing strategy with a forward thinking assuring sales from developing commercial relationships with customers and with the purpose of seeking their loyalty.

You achieve all this by providing the customer with complete information, guiding them and removing all the doubts they may have during the sales process.

Then you can collect the orders, always listening to the customer’s demand, offering them not only the product that they already know and were interested in, but also expanding that information to offer them a new product.

What is the sales force?

  1. As a company you have a product that you want to sell and therefore you make up a group of sellers with resources who in turn follow a sales strategy, all these ingredients are the Sales forceTherefore, it is the close relationship that exists between vendors and existing and potential customers.
  2. It is also representative of the company for customers because it is what offers them all the information, advises them and helps clear up doubts.
  3. But since it is an interactive relationship, it is also representative of the clients before the group of sellers and therefore before the company, why? It is as simple as that you think that customers are the ones who transmit their needs, their tastes, their concerns, satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
  4. For this reason, in order for it to meet the objectives set by the company and function properly, you must manage it properly.
  5. First of all, the sales force must have a good organization, since the sales group can be divided between internal and external salespeople, that is, a group of salespeople who will work within the company and another who will be in charge of visiting customers.

It is in the latter case when you need an organization such that the same group is divided into structures, a small group will be dedicated to selling within a specific territory with a specific product for sale or with all products.

  1. You must make a good selection of salespeople according to the requirements that you will have raised as a rule for them to be hired and fill that job.
  2. Once you have evaluated, interviewed potential salespeople according to their fulfillment of the requirements and hire those who you think have the most aptitude to fill the job, the training stage begins.
  3. To do this, you will visit the company with the new sellers, you will introduce them, you will let them know the market to which your product is directed, the current customers and you will also inform them about the product they should sell.
  4. This will be an initial training, then you will train them permanently either with courses, meetings, talks, seminars, etc.
  5. Sales management requires motivation because in addition to allowing salespeople to obtain the greatest amount of sales, it also helps them not to be disappointed when they fail to sell what they propose.
  6. Motivation can be exercised in different ways, for example with compensation, with sales commissions or offering the opportunity to develop from a special training that you deem appropriate for the area you occupy.
  7. Without damaging the good working environment, the supervision of the sellers is also essential, for example with a sales report indicating the number of sales made, the expenses incurred, etc.
  8. Finally, sellers also need an evaluation, since from the sales report it is possible to know the performance obtained, if the objectives have been achieved, if there is a good relationship with the other teams in the company, etc.

In short, the sales force is a team of people oriented to the sale of a product that, based on a sales strategy and resources, make people interested in the product, satisfied with it and remain loyal to the company.

Structure of the sales force

As you read earlier, the sales force has different structures:

  1. Geographical, in the horizontal structure it is the most common. You assign each vendor or small group of vendors a particular geographic territory. Each of the sellers will be responsible for the sale with the results.
  2. By product: Each seller is dedicated to the sale of a particular product after studying all its characteristics in order to provide potential customers with complete information about the product. It is beneficial to management because it can keep tight control over the products that the company sells.
  3. By market, it is the market segmentation, it studies a customer sector in order to know what it needs and it is also beneficial for sellers because it allows them to get involved in the business and knowing the specific needs of potential customers increases the possibility of successful sale.

Organization of the sales force

The organization depends on the structure of the company and the need for sale, since the organization derives responsibility and distribution of the products, processes the commercial operation and subdivides the market by regions.

Example sales force

  1. A practical example of a sales force is the Planeta publishing house with its group of salespeople who take care of the bookstores.
  2. Salespeople are professionals who attend workshops and seminars where they learn about the sales strategy and also stay informed about the management processes.
  3. They also maintain contact with the editors who are in charge of giving talks about the authors and the latest news.
  4. The entire company is involved from the vice presidency to the management that is in charge of organizing the meeting schedule.
  5. However, the company not only trains salespeople, but all staff are properly trained based on the fact that in the face of a telephone call, staff from any sector have sufficient capacity to convince the customer.