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The Sales Meeting...
How Best to Achieve your Company's Marketing Goal

"Call a sales meeting? Oh, I couldn't do that! My sales people are far too independent. They will be insulted and think I am checking up on them. I'm sure that they are doing their best for me."

Such was the response I recently received from one of my best clients. We had done an effective job clearly identifying essential sales objectives for each region and targeting the specific prospects needed to bolster poorer performing territories. The essential next step was to transfer this information to the outside sales staff. Yet my recommendation that we implement this plan through a sales meeting was met with considerable anxiety.

Sounds absurd? Unfortunately, experience has found such situations to be far too often the case. Management with concentration focused IN the business rather than ON the business loses site of the fundamental reason that the sales force is "out there", in the first place: To achieve the marketing goals established by management. As a result, management frequently leaves sales staff misdirected and inadequately armed.

The problem is invariably due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the "odd couple" relationship between Sales & Marketing. Sales activity is actually a sub-set of the broader Marketing discipline. Indeed, Marketing is more than a set of auxiliary services such as advertising, promotional literature, catalogs, etc. Marketing encompasses a broad range of functions critical to the wherewithal of the business as a whole, such as:

• Product Planning: What exactly do we sell?
• Product Pricing: For how much?
• Target Marketing: To whom?
• Channel Management: How?
• Promotion Planning: Direct Sales, Advertising, Public Relations

Sadly, launching an aggressive sales efforts toward unsuspecting prospects without providing the sales staff with clear sets of objectives, performance measures, and controls does little for the customer, the company or the sales staff, itself.

Putting it simply, most often an abundant supply of quality product or service, at competitive prices, promoted by well-trained sales force is not nearly enough. Of critical importance to the success of the enterprise are fundamental marketing activities:

• A clear understanding of customer wants, needs, and buying habits
• "Engineering" of company products and services to meet these customer needs.
• A comprehensive understanding of product pricing parameters and company cost structures.
• A realistic appreciation of the competitive environment
• The establishment of an effective plan to penetrate the market.

Once these concepts are implemented into an effective marketing plan, it then becomes critical to support the efforts of the sales staff with the kinds of tools that enable it to gain the company's committed objective:

• Clear and precise goals for product/service focus, addressed to target customers, at acceptable prices.
• Accurate performance benchmarks and timely reporting of sales activity to measure sales effectiveness.
• Rewards systems that match the financial needs of the sales person with the performance required by the company.
• Clear job functions that allow sales people to be sales people, eliminating unproductive obstacles in their path.

Marketing is more than setting the wheels in motion and then signing the commission checks. It is managing all elements of the marketing program, including the direct sales effort, to the effective achievement of business goals.