In Small and Medium Enterprises(SME) the CEO often dons the function of Sales Management as well. In the course of my consulting services, I have often found that the CEO restricts himself to Primary Sales and expects the Secondary and Tertiary Sales to happen on their own sales training .

Following is the checklist for SME CEO to follow if he wants to pay due attention to the function of Sales Management:

Choose three days in a week and invest 2 hours /day as follow :

Day 1: Primary Sales (Choose from any or all of the following activities:)

a) Talk / meet distributors and understand their challenges

b) Review the Missed Sales for each distributor sales growth

c) Visit distributors and check their physical stock and tally the same with your book stock for a given distributor

d) Talk to the distributors Beat salesperson and understand the market acceptability

e) Check stock of marketing collaterals like banners, danglers etc with the distributor

f) Meet distributor of competitors to understand their sales strategy practices and market initiatives.
Day 2: Secondary Sales (Choose from any or all of the following activities:)

a) Work with your Sales Officer on his beats and exhibit how to maximize secondary sales in the given market conditions. Your performance on his sales beat will benchmark his further performance.

b) Try to populate the sales beat of the distributor with more counters specific to your nature of business.c)Talk to selected retail counters and understand product acceptance and brand popularity for your brands in the market sales training programs

d) Study brand visibility for your brand as well as competition and learn lessons from the same

e) Understand sampling opportunities in the secondary sales marketDay 3: Tertiary Sales (Choose from any or all of the following activities:)

a) Spend time in A Class retail counters preferably with the distributor and do Footfall Analysis.

b) Visit B category retail counters and motivate them to sell your brand more by extending credit to the right person at the right time for the right purpose sales consultant .

c) Visit C category retail counters and motivate them to reach out to the market to promote your products.This category has spare time and are willing to market your products free of cost to you

2. Spend 30 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening with your sales team everyday.Morning 30 minutes

a) Motivate them for the day

b) Conduct role plays with sales members on one to one basis

c) No negative vibes with the team in the morning please

d) Cross check Beat and Route allocation for the day

e) Give specific instructions, if any, on sales process
and collection
Evening 30 minutes

a) Review the days secondary sales figures, distributor wise and mark the same up against Required Run Rates vis a vis targets

b) Intimate the RRR (Required Run Rate ) for tomorrow to each sales person and each sales team with Sales Performance Management

c) Make random 1-2 telephone calls to sales calls declared in Daily Sales Report of sales executives

d) Conduct role plays for randomly selected sales executives.

e) Each sales person should give his suggestions and complaints for the day

f) Update the FAQ(Frequently Asked Questions) booklet with back office

3. Weekly Sales Review with the sales team ( 2 hours)

a) This weeks secondary sales should be equal to next weeks primary sales in the worst scenario.

b) Each salesperson must collect physical stock at distributors point and non moving stock at secondary sale retail points demand forecasting techniques

c) Each salesperson must have achieved the MNOC(Min no of Calls per day) norm set internally with the team

d) The back office should have updated the CRM software with all sales calls made during the week with requisite classification of type of sales call and status therein.

e) The total outstanding in the market should never be more than the value of stock with distributor and retailers mapped to the former. If yes, it is a cause for concern.

f) Plan marketing initiatives for next week.

g) Choose the best salesperson for last week and redeem this status with something meaningful. (not cash)

This amounts to 14 hours of focussed attention for the CEO in sales management training .

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Author's Bio: 

Mr. Sanjay Singh is a Sales Coach. He mentors CEO's of SME and also consults reputed brands like ICICI, Airtel, Osborne-Lippert, Takshila, Godrej & Boyce, Grindmaster, Lemken, Cahors and many more. He is a visiting faculty at IIM Kolkota. He can be contacted at sanjay@consult4sales.com or hello@consult4sales.com or call on 9970506000