Importance of Sales Management for a Manufacturing Company

Following are the three general objectives of Sales Management:

• Generate sufficient sales volume;
• Contribute towards current profit;
• Ensure continuous growth of the organisation.

Evolution of Sales Management has occurred in four phases:

1. Period before industrial revolution;
2. Production oriented period;
3. Sales oriented period;
4. Customer oriented period.

Characteristics of customer oriented period:

• Focus is on customer satisfaction;
• Emphasis is on “problem solving”, on customer needs and wishes to achieve customer loyalty;
• Marketing means customer satisfaction before, during and after sales;
• Business environment is highly competitive, “buyers market”.

Who are the winners?

Those who know how to offer the right products in the right time, with right quality and quantity, at the right place with the right price.

How Sales Management helps to achieve that?

Sales should be co-ordinated with Manufacturing before, during and after manufacturing:

1. Advice for manufacturing start-ups: sell before manufacturing;
2. Ask customers about quality, reliability, operational and maintenance problems;
3. Forward such matters promptly to manufacturing divisions;
4. They in turn solicit the services of R&D engineers, if needed, for incorporating modifications or re-drafting the User Manual;
5. Sometimes distributors complain about non-availability of spare parts, or replacement of item returned for repair;
6. Sales team efforts with other divisions to solve such problems will yield customer satisfaction and goodwill.

Our resume:  establishing and managing a customer relations management process is critical for profitability of the manufacturing organization.