Sales Planning and Operations1

Unit 20: Sales Planning and Operations

Name of Author
Name of institution
Date

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Table of Contents
Task 1: Scenario Enviro-Cars Ltd.................................................................................................1
Introduction..................................................................................................................................1
Discussion....................................................................................................................................1
1. Explain how personal selling at Enviro-Cars Ltd supports other promotional activities.....1
2. Compare buyer behaviour and the decision making process in different situations with
special reference to Enviro-Cars Ltd........................................................................................2
3. Analyse the role of the sales teams in the overall marketing strategy for the Enviro-Cars
Ltd............................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................4
Task 3: Scenario - Plastic Products Ltd...........................................................................................4
1. Explain with examples, how sales strategies can be aligned with corporate objectives in
organisations like Plastic Products...............................................................................................4
2. Explain why the recruitment and selection procedures are important for Plastic Products
Ltd................................................................................................................................................5
3. Evaluate the role of Motivation at Plastic Products Ltd. You should also explain how
Remuneration and Training can be utilised as tools for motivation within Sales Management.. 6
4. Explain how Plastic Products Ltd. can organise Sales activities in order to control of sales
output...........................................................................................................................................7
5. Explain with examples, how effective Sales Management can be supported by the use of
databases......................................................................................................................................7
Task 4: Scenario Currys (Dixons Carphone)................................................................................8
1. Investigate opportunities for selling internationally into your chosen emerging market.........8
2. Investigate opportunities for using Exhibitions/Trade-fairs in your chosen emerging market.
......................................................................................................................................................8
3. Develop a Sales Plan for a product category of Currys suitable for your chosen emerging
market...........................................................................................................................................9

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Task 1: Scenario Enviro-Cars Ltd
Introduction
The scenario understudy for this report pertains to Enviro-Cars Ltd, a car dealership
business in England, suffering from decreasing sales due to a recent upheaval of their
experienced staff. Enviro-Cars Ltd is now trying to re-establish their market presence and use
enhanced personal selling to increase their decreasing sales.

Discussion
1. Explain how personal selling at Enviro-Cars Ltd supports other promotional activities
In the words ofauthors Manning, Ahearne& Reece (2011) the concept of personal selling
refers to a type of organization where employees sell the product directly to the customer after
holding face to face meetings. The primary goal of the personal selling team is to encourage the
customer to make the purchase through their actions, attitude and competent knowledge about
the product. The cliental for Enviro-Cars is twofold, B2C and B2B. B2C refers to private
customers who require a car for their own personal use (Ta, Esper& Hofer, 2015, p.133).
Whereas B2B refers to those business customers who require cars for their business use (Vargo&
Lusch,2011, p.183). For both the two clients the sales team pitch is different. For private
customers the focus of the sales pitch should be based on how economical the cars are at EnviroCars. The personal selling team should be well versed in the price of the cars offered by EnviroCar and the price offered by competitors. In contrast when negotiating with business customers,
the sales team for Enviro-Car should articulate the benefit of bulk buying and how the features
offered by Enviro-Cars product can enhance the productivity of the business.

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2. Compare buyer behaviour and the decision making process in different situations with special
reference to Enviro-Cars Ltd.
In addition personal selling can also support other promotional activities that Enviro-Cars
can adopt to boost their sales. Recently Envrio-Cars decided to align their positioning strategy
with the provision of environment friendly car which are economical in price. For this particular
aspect the role of the sales team is important in instilling the concept of environment friendliness
in the consumers who visit the distribution centres with the intention of purchase. The
importance of personal selling is also extended towards other modes of promotion like
advertisement and discount offerings. Most scholars believe that personal selling does not have a
major role to play in the process of advertisement (OGuinn, 2014). However, one of the factors
of personal selling is attention to detail, which is essential in a good advertisement campaign.
Attention to detail can allow the marketer to redirect the attention of the audience to an area of
their choice; in the case of Enviro-Cars that choice is environment friendly products and
economic pricing. Another promotional platform is Sales promotion. This is a short term period
where the organization tries to boost their sales through various different aspects such as
discount vouchers. Personal Selling is again at the helm of this promotional campaign as their
task is to build confidence among the target audience to make the purchase and benefit from the
discounts (Czinkota&Ronkainen, 2012).
While personal selling is critical for Enviro-Cars to boost their sales, another dimension
that the organization needs to focus on is the buying behaviour process of the customers.
According to author Johnston & Marshall (2013) the buying behaviour process includes the
following steps as stated in Fig1:

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Figure 1: Consumer Decision Making Process

Source: https://goo.gl/IRJXN1

For a product which requires a substantial amount of investment, like the acquisition of a
new house, will have a significantly lengthier decision making process as considerable thought
would be given to each of the five stages in the consumer purchase model (Tung & Carlson,
2015, p.864). In contrast, if the consumer is buying a new pair of shoes, the decision making
process will be considerably shorter as the consumer will directly move on to the last stage, post
purchase, that is the feeling of either regret of happiness of making the decision.

3. Analyse the role of the sales teams in the overall marketing strategy for the Enviro-Cars Ltd.
For Enviro-Cars the consumers decision making process will involve all the five stages
because the consumer is investing in to a product which requires prior information and the search
of alternate car vendors. At this point it is the job of the sales team for Enviro-Cars to develop a
successful marketing strategy based on personal selling and the consumer buying and decision

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making process. Any marketing strategy that is being designed is implemented by the sales team
eventually. Therefore, the strategies should be aligned along the capabilities of the sales team.
Additionally, the sales team can provide sufficient information based on their interaction with the
customers as to what the intended target audience requires. Weather they prefer environment
friendly cars or are they looking for cars that are economical in terms of price and the fuel
consumption. Articulating the entire information the marketing strategies can be designed
accordingly so that they have a higher effective rate.

Conclusion
Enviro-Cars is facing decrease in sales due to inexperience level of their staff therefore
they need to train their staff and better articulate the consumer buying behaviour in order to make
sufficient marketing strategies which can be implemented effectively through the sales teams
personal selling ability.

Task 3: Scenario - Plastic Products Ltd

1. Explain with examples, how sales strategies can be aligned with corporate objectives in
organisations like Plastic Products.

One of the ways through which Plastic Products Ltd can inundate their sales strategies
with their corporate objectives is to decide a corporate strategy that will solely be based
on the sales results of the company. It is important to determine the overall goal of the
organization, for example is Plastic Product Ltd looking to increase their revenues, or are
they looking for further market penetration which would require the sales team to sale
more products (Ingram, 2012).

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Another approach to achieve the desired target of aligning sales strategies with corporate
objectives is through training the sales team in the art of personal selling. Elaborating on
the example of Plastic Products Ltd, they recently increased their regional sales force in
order to increase their customer base (corporate objective). To achieve this objective, they
can use the sales strategy of Personal Selling whereby Plastic Products Ltd can train the
sales team to be better negotiators and confident in being able to sell the products to

either business clients or private customers (Ravishankar, Pan &Leidner, 2011, p.42).
Communication can also be used as a tool by Plastic Products Ltd to align their sales
strategies with their corporate objectives. For example, the senior level management can
hold a meeting where they coordinate all the corporate objectives with the sales team so
that they can align their personal sales goals with the communicated corporate objectives.

2. Explain why the recruitment and selection procedures are important for Plastic Products Ltd.
The recruitment and selection process within any organization plays a vital role in
making sure that the employees recruited are best suited for the organization and can provide
enhanced productivity levels within the organization (Hassan, 2014).

As previously narrated recruitment is a costly process and if the right employee is hired
and trained they can add incremental value to the firms productivity. Furthermore, the
right employee is also loyal to the organization decreasing the turnover rate for the

organization (Taylor, 2014).

Without having a competent workforce, the organization can face work related issues
which can cause deadlines to be missed quality of workforce to be deteriorated (Townley,

2014).
Furthermore, if the recruitment and selection process is flawed the increased
advertisement cost for rehiring the right employee can be detrimental.

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Lastly without a proper recruitment and selection process the firm can face legal issues as
well. If the recruiter or the HR manager at Plastic Products Ltd selecting new employee is
inefficient or incompetent and undertakes discriminatory activities, the applicant can file
a lawsuit against the organization demanding justice (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014).

3. Evaluate the role of Motivation at Plastic Products Ltd. You should also explain how
Remuneration and Training can be utilised as tools for motivation within Sales Management.
The human resource manager at Plastic Products Ltd must articulate the importance of
motivational tactics in order to improve the moral of the employees. If the appropriate
motivational strategies are used Plastic Public Ltd can benefit from incremental employee
engagement where the employees take further accountability of the work they perform (Schunk&
Zimmerman, 2012). This in turn can increase the employee vigilance level with the work they
perform ensuring that the final deliverables are of high work quality.
In addition, high motivation levels among the employees can also increase their loyalty
levels with Plastic Products Ltd. If the employees are well motivated they will likely be able to
increase their association with the organization showing increased commitment levels.
Motivation can be done through different modes, either through extensive techniques like
Remunerations or intrinsic method like Training and development. Sales staff at Plastic Products
Ltd can be motivated either through better remuneration packages where the sales team is given
incremental financial support on top of their regular salary (Riters, 2012). However, some of the
staff members may not be motivated through financial benefits and may require intrinsic
motivation like training and development. Training provides employees with the chance to
improve their professional career where they undertake better and new skills on the expensive of
the organization.

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4. Explain how Plastic Products Ltd. can organise Sales activities in order to control of sales
output.
Three primary sales activities that can be used for control for sales output are; Order
Confirmation, Delivery Note and Invoice (Miao & Evans, 2013, p.79). Through these sales
activities Plastic Product Ltd can easily make sure that sales are delivered to the right client and
make future sales forecasts through accumulating the previous sales invoice data. This would
allow the organization to assess the overall demand of their products and make the necessary
future decision pertaining to the acquisition of raw material. Excessive raw material can increase
the overhead costs for Plastic Products Ltd, because it would also increase the storage costs
along with ensuring that the quality of the raw material does not deteriorate.

5. Explain with examples, how effective Sales Management can be supported by the use of
databases.
The use of technology is often used in CRM practices where client databases are
manufactured in order to keep a detailed list of all the client activities (Heller &Parasnis, 2011,
p.25). Plastic Product Ltd can better retain their customers through the use of effective sales
databases. Saving key personal and professional information about the customers can enable the
sales team to make better future decisions about the same client. Furthermore, better sales
scheduling can be done through effective sales databases. The time the client purchased a
particular product to the time the product was delivered can be saved in the database (Ernst et al,
2011, p.297). This can allow the sales team to make appropriate feedback with the client.
Another benefit for the sales management team through effective database schedules is the

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element of targeted marketing. Since the organization is aware about the preferences of the
customers they can make personalized marketing strategies for key customers.

Task 4: Scenario Currys (Dixons Carphone)

1. Investigate opportunities for selling internationally into your chosen emerging market.
Currys can venture into the Indian market, which is considered one of the latest and
fastest growing economies. Recently, Indian Prime Minister NarinderModi initiated the Digital
India Campaign with emphasis on the use of technological goods (CXO, 2015). Since the Indian
economy at the moment is undergoing a technological change, it is feasible to operate in the
market and benefit from increased revenues and sales. The Indian electronic industry has grown
by 10.1 per cent along with the changes in the consumer preference. Recently Indias prime
minister visited the United Kingdom and agreed to new trade agreement thereby providing
Currays with an easier entrance in the Indian market (BBC, 2015). Another opportunity for
Currays is the increasing living standards of urban areas in India, where majority of the target
audience for Currays resides.

2. Investigate opportunities for using Exhibitions/Trade-fairs in your chosen emerging market.

Exhibitions or Trade-Fairs relate to the demonstration of goods and services to an
enlarged target audience whereby more people can witness the product being operational. Certain
key advantages of trade shows in India include:

Generate lucrative, highly targeted business leads within the industry.

Get an idea about what is preferred by the audience and what is not. Currays can have a
clear idea as to which of their products should they market in the Indian market.

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Increase brand awareness, with the trend of tradeshows increasing in India, it is easier to
increase the brands awareness.

3. Develop a Sales Plan for a product category of Currys suitable for your chosen emerging
market.
Sales Plan:
Step1: Increase the sales of Televisions provided by Curraysin India by 15%
Step 2: Increase the Sales of Television in the upcoming Diwali Festival along with a 15%
increase in Sales during the Christmas period.
Step 3: Decrease in inflation rates in 2014 as compared to 2013 has allowed the consumers to
increase their capital intensive expenditure. Emphasis by the Indian government on compulsory
digitisation has boosted sales for LCD and LEDs in India. Along with the growth in Indias
electronic market there has been a sharp increase in the sales of Home Theatres Systems and
other related products further strengthening Currays belief in venturing in to the Indian Markets.
Other improving stats within the Indian electronic market are the dominance of foreign players
who are operating in the electronic industry. Currently Indian Electronic Market is dominated by
Korea however Currays can provide higher quality products to a market which is quality
sensitive (EuroMonitor, 2015).
Step 4: The following plan shall be implemented in November 2015 and the outcomes are
expected to be met around mid-July 2016 during the festive period of Eid in India.
Step 5: The budget allocated for this venture is 15 million pounds, where the conversation into
the Indian currency can allow Currays to benefit from a higher exchange rate.

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