Question

The company officers have made a decision to develop partnerships with a group of distributors. These distributors will employ sales people to call on retailers who sell Body Glove products. What steps can Body Glove take to ensure that retailers and retail customers receive excellent service? Give reasons to justify your steps

Answer 1

Since a partnership is being developed where distributors will employe salespersons, the distributors are the ones who will have to ensure the sales of the company. Therefore, it is important that the company ensures that the salespersons are doing a good job. Some of the steps body gloves can take is as follow.

1)Provide Sales training to salespersons- Product Training should be provided to salespersons on a regular basis. This is because the distributors may not have the means and financials to provide such training. This will ensure salespersons are up to date with the product feature and competitors products and also soft skills training for selling. Service personnel should also be provided with technical trainings and customer handling training.

2)Audits- Periodic audits of salesperson performance should be undertaken. It is important to check whether the salesperson is visiting all the assigned retailers, whether all the sales documentation is correct or not, the retailers are being provided with the correct information or not. Service audits must be carried out to know if the service personnel have been able to deliver on-ground. Optimizing their time and ways to increase their efficiency.

3)Feedbacks- Feedbacks should be taken from retailers about the salesperson's pitch and whether they are satisfied with the salespersons information and product knowledge. Retailers often readily provide competitors with information. Salesperson must collect this feedback for their own use.

4)Assign a Mentor- Mentors should be assigned to the underperforming salesperson so they can be guided and be moulded. Often such partnership can provide the impetus for a salesperson to perform exceptionally better than before.