Sales Force Management Skills and Basic Marketing Process

The following skills are demanded of market professionals:

• Selling and Sales management, including the collection of payments
• Advertising – Creative way with less expenditures
• Sales promotion – good communications skill
• Publicity
• Public relations
• Exhibitions and other event management
• Packaging and branding
• Corporate identity and image
• Market research
• Encourage word of mouth

Above all, a marketing professional must master the art of persuasion (influencing and negotiating) and be patient, passionate and able to persevere at all times.

He or she must accept the fact that the customer is always the king.

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He or she must aim to inform and educate the customer and satisfy his/her needs, provide good backup service, maintain relationship and make sure that the customer pay the bills.

Basic Marketing Process

Under the marketing concept, the firm must find a way to discover unfulfilled customer needs and bring to market products that satisfy those needs.

The process of doing so can be modeled in a sequence of steps the situation is analyzed to identify opportunities, the strategy is formulated for a value proposition, tactical decision are made, the plan is implemented and the results are monitored.

Decision Implementation and Control

There are several frameworks that can be used to add structure to the situation analysis:

a) 5C Analysis – Company, customers, competitors, collaborations, climate. Company represents the internal situation; the other four cover aspects of the eternal situation.

b) PEST Analysis – Macro-environmental, political, economical, social, and technological factors and SWOT analysis strengthen weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

The marketing strategy involves, segmentation, target market selection, product positing within the target market and value proposition to the target market.

Marketing Mix Decisions means detailed tactical decisions ten are made for the controllable parameters of the marketing mix.

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The action items include:

• Product development – specifying designing, and producing the first units of the product. Pricing decisions
• Distribution contracts
• Promotional campaign development
• Farber’s Campaign Customer Rights

Farber (2005 P.155) list down the followings:

• The customer has the right to be told the truth
• The customer has the right to expect the salesperson to have expert knowledge
• The customer has the right to expect that all promises and commitments will be kept The customer has the right to be treated with dignity and respect

• The customer has the right to expect satisfaction from the product or service The customer has the right to a breakdown of cost and fees
• The customer has the right to service and support

• The customer has the right have calls returned promptly even when he or she may be calling with a problem or to complain

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In summary, marketing refers to the social management processes by which products, or groups‟ needs and wants. These processes include, but are not limited to advertising, (12 promotion, distribution, and sales).

Everyone markets something without even realizing it throughout his or her life.

Marketing is not mere selling. But selling is at the heart of marketing. Like it or not, marketing has been, is and will certainly be part and parcel our life.

If you are looking for a suitable job, you must know how to market yourself. If you want to win a competition, you must understand and practice the art of marketing, more soon the ability to communicate and influence your target audience efficiently and master the ways to develop a salable brand out of you or your products and services.

Learning marketing formally from experts will help you to understand and put into practice the proven ways of doing marketing.

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