CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background to the study

Sales forces today face many challenges originating from both outside and inside of their organizations (Jones & Weitz, 2005). As the biggest external actor, customers constantly raise their expectations. Through the Internet they inform themselves about product alternatives before making a purchase. They expect from salespeople to be equally well informed about the best solution possibilities and the latest market trends.

Recent advances in communication technologies give the capacity to communicate quickly and effectively, making customers demand quick response and accessibility from the salesperson side. Buying procedures are becoming complex and require salespeople to deal with greater networks within client organizations.

Furthermore, customers are increasingly opting for customized solutions which place additional burden on salespeople in terms of information gathering, communication and coordination within both buyer and seller organizations (Zoltners & Zoltners, 2001).

In addition to rising customer expectations, intense competition places great pressure on salespeople by squeezing the profit margins. Globalization brings down the borders and makes market entry easier for competitors. Companies and sales forces have to deal with a reduced amount of differentiation from competition and increased product complexity.

As product life cycles shorten, salespeople must more frequently update their product knowledge. It gets increasingly difficult to access profitable customers, and companies need to develop better ways of allocating their resources to the right customer segments (Reinartz & Kumar, 2002).

High sales numbers are crucial for the success of any company no matter if they do business with goods or services. In other words, the more products a company sells, the higher their profit is. The importance of sales for the success of a business is self-explaining and is emphasized by the fact that many companies implement whole sales and marketing departments in order to achieve the highest possible sales performance. But when the performance does not show the desired results, companies are trying to find a way to counteract this development.

In today’s competitive marketplace, personal selling is the key to success for many firms (Anderson, 1996). This is why enhancing the salespeople performance is one of the most urgent tasks managers face (Boles & Barksdale, 2000). However, the role of salespeople has in fact expanded beyond the generation of sales and more towards building relationships with customers (Ingram & Williams, 2001).

Consequently, salespeople should focus more on implementing a customer-oriented approach, which implies solving customers’ problems, providing opportunities and adding value to the customer’s business over an extended period of time. The empirical studies carried out by (Williams & Attaway, 1996) show that customer-oriented selling leads to the successful development of relationships with customers.

Sales Force Management entails planning, control, coordinating the activities of the Sales force team in order to achieve the sales Objectives of a company and the overall marketing goal. It can be a short term goal or a long-term goal. Over the years most companies in Cameroon seem to neglect the sales force team and no proper management and control is set for the team. Proper management and control entails proper recruitment process, training, retention, motivation, and sales force relationship management. Thereby leads to a poor performance by the sales force team and consequently, a drop in sales and revenues.

According to Rupi Shivan et al (2016), a good sales force team is part of the company’s asset. Sales force Managers should set motivational patterns that will bring the sales force closer to the company. A company who turn to Manage Sales force properly has successfully created a straight in direct line of CRM. Report of Vodafone India shows that from 2007-2017, 89 percent of their customers were recruited by sales force team.

Philip Kotler (2014) stipulated that “customer is king”. But in contemporary sales and marketing “An employee or gainful service placer is King”. What is a company sales performance without its sales force team? What will happen to the sales of the company’s product when there is no proper sales management? Personal selling is the only promotional mix which brings revenue to the company. Also, sales force team accounts for 90% of a successful personal selling process.

Similarly, many consumer companies like insurance companies and stockbrokers employ field sales persons. Even in company owned outlets, there are salespeople to help consumers locate the right product and buy it. US firms spend over a trillion dollars annually on sales forces and sales force materials-more than they spend on any other communication or promotion method. Nearly 12 percent of the total workforce work full-time in sales occupations.

Megan Ranger in his article on Nimble: talks about sales performance, means how effective the members of your sales team are when it comes to setting goals and achieving them. Sales revenue is the main factor that helps measure performance. However, there are some other metrics that can also influence this indicator, such as the amount of repeat business and time spent per client.

A service or product can’t sell itself (no matter how qualitative it is). That’s why your success is contingent on the professionalism of your sales team that requires at least one member who understands how to sell and knows for sure how to increase your revenue.

1.2. Problem Statement

Based on research carried out by Aksoy et al. (2008) and Fornell et al (2006), there is a clear existing relationship between the level of customer satisfaction and customer retention, revenue growth, profitability and value creation. As Blocker and Panagopoulos (2012) point out, sales force has the responsibility to translate diverse customer needs into the firm to ensure their full satisfaction. They are best placed to not only adapt to previous but also current changes in customer needs while anticipating customer’s future desires. (Flint, woodruff & Gardial 2002).

Mckinsey and Co in an article published in June 2017 purported that half of a company’s value creation lies with the sales force therefore top performing sales organizations treat their sales people like customers. Nonetheless, many organizations still ignorantly treat their sales Force team as trash, by not providing proper training, intentional retention strategy, motivation, and sales force relationship management thereby leading to mobility of sales force.

In Cameroon, yearly most companies experience a high rate of labour turnover in their sales Force team. Consequently, resulting to a drop in sales and revenues as well as giving bad brand image in the public persona.

VIETTEL Cameroun S.A, also faces the afore problem of in effective sales force management, since 2014 it has recorded in its sales system database a total number of 16000 D2D (Door to Door) both Local and Normal. Based on June 2020, D2D payment Records (see appendix 2) the company only have 1349 active D2D, which not up to 20 have a longevity of 5years nationwide. Most of these team members usually monger in and out of other telecommunication companies like MTN, Orange TM.

1.3. Research Questions       

1.3.1 General Research Questions

Why do companies have low sales force performance?

1.3.2 Specific Research Questions

1. What is the link between appropriate training and a company’s sales force performance?
2. What is the link between intentional retention strategies and a company’s sales force performance?
3. What is the link between motivation and a company’s sales force performance?
4. What is the link between sales force recruitment and a company’s sales force performance?

1.4. Research Objectives

1.4.1 General Research Objectives

To spot out why companies have low sales force performance.

1.4.2 Specific Research Objectives

1. To understand the link between Appropriate training and a company’s sales force performance.
2. To understand the link between intentional retention strategies and a company’s sales force performance.
3. To understand between motivation and a company’s sales force performance.
4. To understand the link between sales force recruitment and a company’s sales force performance.