General Objective As Sales Director And Background Knoweldge My role as Sales Director is essential and determines the nature

of our business as a whole. A company may be organised and successful, however, in reality it all comes down to the ability of the salesmen to encourage people to purchase a product, as this will be the factor that increases revenue. A company may be largely successful in terms of their actual product and market aims, but clearly decline when it comes down to selling the product. This is due to the lack of ability of the salesmen, and it is evident that enhanced sales techniques are required. I clearly understand that the Young Enterprise scheme is all about a company as a whole and team work must be incorporated. However, each sub-team must also excel in their individual roles and contribute a sufficient amount towards the business. If one sub-team does not produce what is obligated of them, the entire company will suffer, and excess weight will be put on the other participants; for they must correct the sub-teams inability amongst themselves. As far as our company, Envent, is concerned, I contributed not only a sufficient amount, but a vast amount to the company. As sales director, my skill set seemed to not only fit, but almost mimic the exact attributes required for the job. A sales director must be determined, competent, able to adapt, and willing to go out there and, as many people say, sell their hearts out. I, without doubt, easily achieved this with my natural business acumen and intuition. At the start of the company, we decided to brainstorm and consider products we could sell. Many people on the team were hugely enthusiastic with ideas ranging from cookery classes to selling sweets. We then eliminated the ideas which we considered to be insufficient not include a large enough target market, or would not encourage much revenue. In the end we decided to sell hoodies. Looking back at it, I can clearly comprehend why this brainstorm was necessary and how it benefitted our company. Organisation is all about achieving a maximum outcome in a short period of time. This brainstorm did just that, as it was a quick and efficient way of undertaking this task and it saved us a lot of time The hoodies were aimed to be sold to students in schools in particular.

We saw a rather large gap in the market, and although we knew that there were other companies doing similar things, we wanted to encourage it on a large scale and make hoodies which are more accessible and exclusive to schools. In business it is perfectly fine to visualise a product to be appealing and selling in large numbers, however these visions do not always match up with the true reality. It may turn out that the product is unsuccessful and that you overestimated your market. Just because it is appealing to to a minority doesn't mean that it will remain this way for the majority of potential buyers. This is why it is always important to have test samples and perhaps even focus groups. They help to guide the company towards what is appealing to the current market, and how much they should price their product in order to get an adequate volume of sales. From this base knowledge I already possessed, I encouraged the team to arrange a survey for a test sample of students. Prior to this, I encountered various objections from participants on the team saying that a sample was not necessary, and that they knew that the hoodies would sell. I was fully aware that this was a deep mistake to fall into, and although in business it can be beneficial to take risks, there is no space for random assumptions from those who were not even very experienced in business themselves. Finally I managed to explain why this sample was important. From the sample we saw that people would not have actually paid our default price for the hoodies so we changed our prices to fit in with the current market at the time. We were all glad that we had carried out this survey in the end, and this is another example of when my business intuition came in play. Not only this but the survey had also assissted us when we wanted to see whether students minded what material the hoodies were made out of. Later a member on the team suggested the hypothesis of personalised hoodies, in which one can have whatever written on it they want (obviously with a figure limit do to practicality reasons.) This was truly a revelation! A dynamic, original idea yet also very practical. We knew this would sell specifically well at schools because students like the idea of having personalised clothes and being original. In Depth Role Specifically As Sales Director

Although we already knew that we would price the hoodies around roughly 25 (this is taking into consideration producting, personalisation delivery costs etc.), from the survey we carried out, which I already mentioned earlier, we found out that many people were not willing to pay 25 and that they would feel more comfortable around the 20 mark. Many students told us how they would rather pay with one note and they felt that 20 was more of a rounder number. So as a good business we immediately adapted to this and decided to sell them at 20. In a weekly meeting we disgussed where the hoodies would be sold. Someone suggested in the area outside our cantine. This was a very clever tactic indeed, as many people will pass this area after lunch so all we had to do was lure them in. In business, it is not only about your product but also the location at which you sell it. A company with a far less invovative product may generate more revenue than a comapany with a great product merely because of the location at which they choose to sell. Using one already successful business to provide a location for another new business is an extremely effective technique which is commonly used in the business world. At our stand outside the cantine area we displayed sample hoodies of different sizes to give our customers an insight into what they were buying.