Young / Milton Knowledge Management for Sales and Marketing

A Practitioner's Guide
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-78063-264-3
Verlag: Elsevier Science & Techn.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 196 Seiten

While this book is primarily aimed at those who are involved in Knowledge Management (KM) or have recently been appointed to deliver KM in sales and marketing environments, it is also highly relevant to those engaged in the management or delivery of sales and marketing activities. This book presents models to assist the reader to understand how knowledge can be applied and reused within the sales and marketing processes, leading to an enhanced win rate.Topics covered provide managers and practitioners with the necessary principles, approaches and tools to be able to design their approach from scratch or to be able to compare their existing practices against world class examples. Several models and methodologies are explained which can be applied or replicated in a wide variety of industries. The book also features numerous case studies which illustrate the journey that various companies are taking as they implement KM within sales and marketing. - Develops a generic model for managing knowledge in sales and marketing environments - Provides a handbook for line managers wishing to introduce knowledge management into their sales and marketing activities - Written by a highly knowledgeable and well-respected practitioner in the field who is mentored by an recognised sales and marketing industry expert

Tom Young is Chairman of Knoco Ltd. Prior to that Tom was founding member and Principal Coach of BPs Knowledge Management Team and Virtual Teamworking project. His understanding of cultures and industries and how to successfully interact with them, allows him to be equally at home in the Asia Pacific as in Wall Street.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Young, Tom

Milton, Nick

Leseproben

2 The sales and marketing context
In this chapter, we will look at the context for knowledge management within sales and marketing and at the types of knowledge that should be addressed. We need to state up front that there is more than one sales and marketing context. The work of the lone salesperson in a one-to-one relationship with a buyer is very different from that of a marketing team working together on a global campaign based on the latest market research. As we look at the different contexts, we will focus on three main areas:  the distributed salesforce, working with buyers and customers, delivering to sales targets;  the bid team, developing and delivering large-scale bids, often in response to an invitation to tender;  the marketing team, responsible for planning, delivering and evaluating marketing campaigns. For each of these, we will look at the way they work and at the knowledge they need. There are other contexts as well of course – the store-based salespeople, door-to-door selling, the traders who buy and sell commodities, telesales and many others – but these three probably cover between them most of the KM issues for sales and marketing. The sales force
The sales force usually work as individuals, but often these individuals can be grouped into teams covering specific regions and specific products or product ranges for their organisation. They may be selling FMCGs (fast-moving consumer goods) such as clothing or pharmaceuticals to buyers in high street chains (such as Mars in Chapter 9), they may be selling IT solutions to blue-chip businesses (like BT in Chapter 7) or they may be selling cars to fleet buyers in major multinationals. They work to sales targets and are often highly motivated and incentivised to meet those targets. They spend a lot of their time with the buyers and customers and relatively little time at ‘head office’ with the rest of the team. The sales force needs the following knowledge:  Knowledge of how to sell – They need the basic knowledge of the sales process, such as relationship-building, negotiation and closing. This can be taught in theory, but the knowledge is really only acquired through practice, for example through role-play and coaching, as well as on-the-job learning. As one sales director told us, ‘we always do a lot of scenario planning. Before reviews I sit with my team and I plan what is the worst that might happen and how do we combat it? What is the most likely case and how do we combat this? What is the best case and how do we maximise the outcome?’  Knowledge of pricing – Sometimes the price of an item is flexible, with the potential for offers and promotions such as ‘buy one, get one free’. The sales force need to know the pricing strategy, the pricing options and how to sell the benefits of the pricing approach to the buyer. This knowledge needs to be provided to the sales force by the experts in the sales organisation, who themselves rely on input from the sales force. Pricing strategies can usefully be shared between sales forces in different regions and different countries.  Knowledge of product – The sales force need to know the details of the product and to be rapidly briefed about any new products that are developed. In the conversation with the buyer, the sales person has to be the product expert. This knowledge comes from the product development unit and may also be informed by feedback from customers and consumers. One firm producing motor oil products actually delivers regular training (‘Motoroil 101’) to its sales and marketing departments to bring them up to speed in new products.  Knowledge of the consumers and their behaviour – This includes knowledge of consumer wants and buying habits and how to influence them, through display, through promotions and through education. The sales person selling to a retailer, for example, must be the recognised category expert and understand the category shopper better than the buyer and better than the competing companies. ‘One thing that we offer is our understanding of the local consumer and we need to use that knowledge to advise the retailer,’ said one sales manager. This knowledge can be used to sell the products and brands better, to build more ‘shoppable’ displays and help grow sales for the retailer and thus for the sales force. The sales rep starts to act as an expert consultant, offering a knowledge-based service.  Knowledge of their sales to that buyer and the overall market (or competition?) – They need to know the sales data, the margins and the trend. This knowledge will be delivered by the central sales organisation, based on studies and on aggregated sales data from across the firm. One sales manager told us, ‘We have to know our data and information much better than the buyers do. They will use a set of information on how much they buy and sell from us; we need to know these data far better than they do.’ If the buyer understands the data better than the seller, the seller is at a disadvantage. This knowledge needs to cover the buyer’ s competitors’ data as well, if possible. The sales rep selling to a retailer will probably have data for all of the retailer’ s competitors and although they cannot give away any specifics, they can talk about trends and share insights in terms of what is going on across the overall marketplace. This knowledge is much appreciated by the buyer and becomes an added service the sales force can offer.  Knowledge of the buyers and the buying companies – The best sales work through mutual advantage, so that both the buyer and the seller benefit from the deal. Therefore the sales force need knowledge of the buying organisation and its goals and objectives, as well as those of the individual buyers. The sales organisation needs to seek to understand their big customers, their game plan and drivers, and develop and define a customer profile and a unique customer strategy based on that profile, which is shared with and understood by the entire sales force. Although much of this knowledge comes from the sales force themselves, it will again be aggregated by the central organisation.  Knowledge of the production capacity of the organisation – There is no point in selling something that can’ t be delivered, so the sales force need to know what can be produced for and delivered to the client. Again, this knowledge needs to be delivered to the sales force by knowledge transfer along the internal supply chain, and needs to be incorporated into sales targets. A knowledge management framework for a sales organisation will probably contain the following elements: Processes
The processes and technologies marked below in bold are described in detail in Chapters 3 and 5:  coaching and training (including role-play and scenario planning);  regular knowledge exchanges and mini-peer assists during meetings of the regional team and the wider sales community;  creation of knowledge assets on pricing, consumer insights and dealing with buyers (especially major accounts). These knowledge assets will have been developed through interviews with key successful sales staff. Technology
 access to the sales community while on the road, to share updates and ask questions;  access to customer-related and account-related data while on the road and in the office;  provision of knowledge of products; this has to be supported by a mobile-enabled knowledge base. The bid team
A bid team is also involved in selling, but selling in a very different context to that of the field sales force. The task of compiling a modern bid document should not be underestimated. The cost of tendering can run into very substantial figures. The bid team works as a team. Some organisations have a full-time team to work on all bids, while others create new teams to service each bid. We have worked with bid teams in the nuclear industry selling services for decommissioning nuclear power stations, bid teams in the service industry bidding for major private finance initiative (PFI) contracts, such as new schools and hospitals, and oil and gas teams bidding for the right to explore acreage. In each case, the team is looking to sell its service to the client, in competition with rival companies. Bidding is not a continuous operation; it is episodic and each bid can be considered to be a project. The metric for the bid is simple – win or lose (although the magnitude of the win is also important, as the service needs to make a profit. As one bid manager told us, ‘If we get it wrong on a major bid, we can get it wrong for the next 25 years.’ ) However, the best bid team has a high conversion ratio – the ratio of won bids to lost...