Managing Sales Channels

The need for planning and managing sales channels arises either when organizations have to decide the best way to launch a product in the market or when they have to select the best distribution channel. Direct marketing or selling through resellers are the options available to an organization to market its products. Once the marketing channel is decided, the next step is to execute the channel plan. Channel plan is the blueprint to set up distribution channels. Companies need to continuously monitor the distribution channels to track sales results and order flow. They can revise the channel plan whenever they want to do so.

Once the distribution channel partners have been decided, e enabling the distribution channel can improve the communication and transactions with them. Companies can provide them product and price catalogs and can monitor the sales lead they have provided. The technologies that will enable this are:

Sales force automation (SFA) tools.
Online access to ERP Systems.
FAQs and Tech tips for online knowledge base.
Online marketing.

E enabling the sales channel has several benefits. It increases the customer satisfaction as the coordination between supplier and distributors improves significantly. Since the demand chain partners give feedback in real time, operational efficiency is increased because of new automated channels. The limitations of traditional marketing are also eliminated. This will lead to change's in the method of monitoring sales channels. Monitoring of sales channels is done to ensure that the production standards are met. The parameters that are monitored are sales volume, response time for answering queries and the percentage of leads closed.

The enabling technologies for monitoring of sales channels are the sales force automation software and the sales tracking software. The entire process leads to improved customer satisfaction and increased operational efficiency. There would be better customer satisfaction because the sales channels are monitored and operational efficiency would increase due to the replacement of inefficient sales channels with more efficient ones.

Managing Sales Function

The purpose of sales function in any orgAniYation is to increase. sales by acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones. By maintaining an electronic system to monitor sales force, the organization is able to obtain customer information at lower costs. The sales function involves four processes that are discussed below:

Managing leads

The success of any marketing activity can be assessed on the basis of sales leads that are collected, and mapped to the respective marketing campaigns. The activities that can be electronically enabled are:

Receiving sales leads and documenting opportunities. Assigning sales leads.
Updating sales leads. The information pertaining to the market prospects is collected through an electronic inquiry. Managing sales leads electronically could lead to a reduction in cost and manpower as well as an improvement in the accuracy of data transfer.

Selling products

Electronically enabling the sales process helps in eliminating several steps of manual sales. Though not necessarily for all products and services, the automated channel have the following benefits:
Direct sales channel eliminate the need for intermediaries.
Reduction of costs.
Automation facilitates the mapping of customer needs to products. Customers also have the opportunity to find out the price and the availability of the product. The customers can also avail best prices and value added services. The benefits of putting the selling process online are:
Increased customer satisfaction.
Reduction in cost.
Quality standards can be enforced through automation. The quality specifications can be communicated to the suppliers in advance. The suppliers can update their quality standards based on the specifications and can thereby reduce the chances of nollconformance to quality standards.

Managing outbound logistics

The outbound logistics process involves delivery of finished goods from the manufacturer's place to the customers. This process starts once the finished goods are ready for shipment. Some organizations use own delivery vehicles while others outsource finished goods delivery. The activities that can be automated in this process are:
Preparing delivery schedules for customers
Confirming/booking of orders.

Messaging delivery status

The benefits of automating this process include better co ordination among demand chain partners and streamlining of delivery process. Organizations benefit because they can reduce costs and head count. Customers and suppliers can trace the whereabouts of the goods in transit. The types of information in this process that can be communicated electronically include:

Transportation inquires.
Confirmation/Acceptance.
Truck assignments.
Pickup appointments.

Domain Name Search

Managing Sales Channels

E Commerce

Domain Names

Web Hosting

Web Design

Email