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Speaker: Priyavrat Sanyal 
 
So now we'll be talking about how sales are managed in different organization, rather in different 
industries. Let's take an example of automobile industry where sales are done when the customer 
walks into the showroom. So, in this kind of selling situation, the focus of sales manager is on 
generating more prospects and how to convert maximum prospects into order. The focus is 
therefore on how the sales person displays the product, how they interact with the customer and 
how negotiations are taken care of.  
 
Now, if I talk about something like an FMCG industry, which is fast moving consumer goods, the 
selling objective is something different. There, the focus is more on assortment, the display and 
availability of the product. Sales manager focus to keep assortment for the customers who are 
walking in into the store, keep the new products at the eye level so that they can see the product, 
so that is display management, and then make the product available to the customer whenever 
there is a need. For example, making the product like umbrellas available during monsoon.  
 
Now there is another type of selling situation, which is seen in business to business selling typically 
in software industries. There, the selling is more specialized, done by highly trained professionals 
who have technical expertise, and they know about the customer requirements as well. 
 
The focus of the sales manager in such industry is on building customer relationship because by 
having good customer relationship, they can understand the customer's requirement in a much 
better manner and offer their solutions to fulfill those requirements. 
 

 
 
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Speaker: Dhaval Doshi 
 
You learned about the on-field sales person and the selling process he undertakes, which starts 
from prospecting leads to presenting the product to the potential customer, but how does a 
company ensure all its salespeople, can they get their appropriate leads and are well equipped in 
converting them into customers?  
 
In most organizations, say an FMCG company, like HUL or ITC, the large on-field force is headed by 
a team of sales managers. These managers do not actively reach out to customers or perform the 
sales process as a part of their core responsibility, but they perform a very important function in the 
overall sales structure of the organization. Let's understand the roles and responsibilities of a sales 
manager in greater detail in this segment.  
 
Speaker: Amit Rathi 
 
Sales management is a business discipline that focuses on application of various sales techniques 
and the management of a firm's sales operations. A sales manager's responsibility can be clubbed 
into three major headers, one man management. A sales manager is among other things 
responsible for selection, deployment and motivation of salespeople. Apart from this, he or she is 
also responsible for designing control systems. Control systems are designed to align salesperson's 
daily activities with those of the organization.  
 
Let's understand this through an example. Consider an organization such as Britannia, a sales 
manager is looking for an area, say Maharashtra, would have a team close to 10 people looking 
after the sales of the company's bakery and dairy products. He or she would be responsible for 
recruitment of the team in that area for ensuring coordination among personnel. He or she would 
also be responsible for ensuring allocation of target to various territories within Maharashtra, and for 
putting a tracking mechanism in place so that the overall state level targets are monitored and 
eventually met. 
 
The second responsibility is channel management. The sales manager is also responsible for 
managing channel partners. These may be distributors, retailers, telecalling partners, etc. A good 
sales manager should be able to develop healthy relationship with these channel partners. He 
should also be able to develop new channels for success of products and services. Let's look at 
Britannia again, it's biscuit category retails through grocery stores as well as through modern trade 
partners, such as Spencers and Big Bazaar. Products, such as milk and bread have to reach dairy 
boots while it's milk rusk have to reach to tea stalls.  
 
So, it is very, very important for the manager of Britannia to maintain good relations with every 
channel, be it wholesalers, retailers, modern trade business partners, dairy partners, and all of the 
intermediaries. The third responsibility is territory management. A territory is defined as a group of 

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present and potential customers, assigned to an individual or group of sales people. This will be 
discussed in detail in the upcoming module. A sales manager should be able to set targets, plan the 
necessary budgets, meet the targets and minimize any conflicts that might crop up while achieving 
these targets. Conflict is one of the most important factors that a good sales manager should be 
able to manage. This is because conflicts are bound to occur in any organization or in the 
marketplace. 
 
Again, let's understand this through Britannia example, the sales manager would have to identify 
pockets within his or her territory that require higher attention, disproportionate men power, a 
higher marketing spend, and even a better distribution based on market realities. He or she may 
choose to focus on bigger cities, such as Mumbai and Pune, and may also decide to choose 
specific clusters within these cities for a higher penetration.  
 
The manager may also decide to put a rural penetration strategy in place to reach consumers who 
do not have access to competitive brands, such as Parle or Sunfeast.  
 
Speaker: Dhaval Doshi 
 
By now, you have a good grip on the selling process and have an overview of sales management. 
Earlier, you also learned about the certain concepts of marketing, such as STP and the marketing 
mix. Here, we are going to try to tie these things together.  
 
Let's take the example of an insurance company. The marketing message of almost any insurance 
company goes like save on your insurance premium every month and save God the future of your 
loved ones. The sales team who are to pitch and sell insurance products should understand the 
product, know how the saving is possible and how they compete with the rest of the players in the 
market. If the marketing team does not provide adequate information to the sales team, this will not 
be possible. So, for an effective organization, it is important that the sales and marketing team work 
in close alliance.  
 

 
 
Speaker: Prashant Kapur 
 
Therefore, critical roles, which a sales manager performs at Vodafone. Let's take one by one. 
Number one role is channel management. Why does Vodafone needs a channel? Why can't they 
manage entire sales on their own? Vodafone needs a channel as country is very big and diverse 
and they're close to 1.5 million outlets, which need to be serviced on daily or alternate day basis 
with respect to SIM cards and a lot of other products.  
 
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Distributors make sure Vodafone products are available across the outlets, across pan India. In a 
normal case, sales manager works with three distributors and 1200 retailers. Sales manager has to 
ensure that standard sale processes are followed at all the sales point, which are the critical 
process as part of this key role. The second role performed by the sales manager is a man 
management. Sales manager is responsible for managing and motivating the manpower involved in 
selling the products, which is largely distributor sales representative and few company persons.  
 
Sales managers, trains DSRs, brief them about new product, processes and schemes, which are 
offered by the company time to time. So that is a second role, which is performed by the sales 
manager.  
 
The third role performed by the sales manager is managing business objective. Now, sales 
objective is critical as that is the lifeline of an organization. Here, targets are planned, targets are 
reviewed and DSRs who are not achieving the targets, they get reviewed. Targets are planned by 
the sales heads and are given to sales manager approximately by 25th of each month. Sales 
manager divides the targets, distributor wise, and share them back with the sales head. Distributor 
makes DSR wise and retailer wise targets on revenue and acquisitions and the entire list is shared 
back with the sales manager. 
 
Targets are tracked sales manager and distributor wise by the sales head. Sales manager tracks 
DSR wise, distributor wise and retailer wise targets. New targets and schemes are always launched 
on first of every month, as sales discipline is utmost critical. Delay can lead to loss of share. So, 
these are the critical third role, which is performed by the sales manager in his role. The fourth and 
another important role, which is performed by sales manager is territory management. Each 
manager manages the area or pin code.  
 
Let's take an example, the sales manager in this case is managing Worley. That area has been 
divided into minimum number of outlets, which he has to manage. Let's say 400 in this case. The 
DSR and the sales manager has to ensure that 75% of the outlets have to be productive every 
month. Productive here means the same that they have to give some business, which is recharge, 
SIM or something else.  
 
The sales manager has to ensure that each pin code meets that DPL target. DPL means dealer per 
lakh. Dealer per lakh definition is given at the beginning of the month, taking the same example of 
Worley. A Worley has a population of 10 lakhs and the per lakh retailer appointment is 50. Then, in 
this case, DPL will means 500 retailers have to be managed by the end of the year in Worley. Sales 
manager has to impact new retailers as part of the distribution expansion, which figures comes from 
the dealer per lakh. So, this is how the fourth and the most critical role is performed by the sales 
manager. 
 

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So, we have covered four critical roles of sales manager in Vodafone, which he has to perform day 
in and day out, priority and category keeps on changing from time to time, but all those four are the 
critical roles performed by the sales manager. 
 

 
 
Speaker: Anirudh Mendiratta 
 
 
Now, let us look at how sales management helps a company achieve its objectives. If as of late 
2019 or early 2020, you happen to visit a mall. You were most likely to encounter one person, the 
SBI card salesman, why did this happen? It was because as of March 2020, SBI cards wanted to 
open an IPO.  
 
To get an IPO successful, it wanted to have a very wide consumer base and to have that, it went all 
in sales management by putting in kiosks, agents and you know, multiple references to as to 
onboard multiple clients. This was against the conventional wisdom of let's say an HDFC bank who 
gave credit cards to only their own account holders. This change in sales strategy helped SBI cards 
to a bumper IPO. 
 

 
 
Speaker: Dhaval Doshi 
 
You must have seen that during the Diwali or any other festive season, retailers, such as Big Bazaar, 
Spencers and Croma, how products that are specifically meant for the festive season. Also, they 
introduced festive deals and discounts to attract more customers. Who decides the pricing and the 
product mix? Is it the marketing team or the sales team, or is it that both the departments are 
working together?  
 
By now, you are able to guess that these decisions and many of those involve a close synergy 
between the sales and marketing teams, but how does this happen effectively? What are some best 
practices to make sure that the best results for our business are achieved by both the teams 
working together? Let's learn more about this.  
 
Speaker: Amit Rathi 
 

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It may look as though marketing and selling are two different functions with seemingly divergent 
objectives and methodologies. But in reality, both these functions are symbiotic in nature. Both the 
departments work closely with each other to create value and grow the business. Marketing team 
owing to its proximity to product development would share information, product profile, and 
potential customer profile and potential sales and distribution targets with the sales team. The 
marketing team would also share budget allocation plans and the marketing plan for relevant 
period to the sales team.  
 
Sales on the other hand, going to its proximity to the final consumer, would share market 
intelligence with the marketing team to enable the personnel to develop a stronger marketing mix 
that is good balance of 4 Ps, product, price, place, and promotion.  
 
Let's take the example of Big Bazaar selling items related to festive season. The sales team through 
forecasting and sales data could understand the seasonality in sales of different products and could 
provide this information to marketing team. 
 
The marketing team after analysing the data, will tweak the product mix, the visibility of different 
categories and the discount on various categories. So as to meet the customer's demand, the 
marketing team will also explain certain category and brand strategies to the sales function. This 
way, both teams help each other to facilitate the growth of overall business and consumer ship. 
What we can additionally learn is that marketing and sales complement each other.  
 
The process starts with generation of leads. The marketing team generates leads that the sales 
team works on converting. The product research done by marketing team, helps the sales team in 
product pitching, better research enables better delivery of product pitch by the salesperson, 
because he will now have a better understanding of the product that he is selling. The sales team is 
responsible for providing the marketing team with on field intelligence, inputs about changing 
competitive landscape and changing consumer preferences. Based on this information, the 
marketing team can make informed decisions.  
 
Speaker: Dhaval Doshi 
 
So far, you have seen how sales and marketing complement each other. You're understood how 
these two teams work in unison to gain a more revenue for the company. Now, let's go to our 
industry expert Anil for an in depth look and how the synergy works in the B2B domain.  
 
Speaker: Anil Meghnani 
 
Netcore, where I work currently is an Indian company, which primarily focuses on digital marketing 
solutions. At Netcore, I lead a sales team that comprises of 138 people. 
 

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We have clients from various domain, such as banking and finance, insurance, securities, travel, 
consumer goods, and E-commerce. Each and every domain is very different from other in terms of 
customer buying behaviour, and hence, request a different selling strategy. Our marketing team 
helps us in promotions, be it organizing events through advertisements or social media or the series 
of web browser and the popup ads. This helps us to get potential clients to lend on a website and if 
found interested, they will be contacted by our sales executive.  
 
The marketing team also launched a Drip campaign in which they interact with our potential clients 
through emails and by sending them newsletters with content pertinent to their earlier searches 
and areas of interest. This helps the marketing team to engage with the potential clients and keep 
them hooked on until they are ready to convert before handing them over to the sales team.  
 
At Netcore, a major area where the marketing team helped us was with the content marketing 
strategy. They develop content, which largely contents the product portfolio, the competitor 
analysis, potential target groups. They hand this content over to the sales team, which in turn helps 
themselves to pitch the product in front of the clients successfully.  
 
Earlier, when pitching for clients, we used a standard set of testimonials that included companies in 
the BFSI segment, such as HDFC life, Kotak life, in the travel industry like Thomas Cook and Ease 
My Trip, but this was not helping our case. As per the feedback, provided the sales team, the 
marketing team at Netcore developed different type of content for different domains. 
 
Now, when we approach a potential lead, we tailor our pitch and set of testimonials according to 
their business vertical. For example, when we approached Kotak life, we talked about our 
experience of working with banking and insurance clients and the positive response we garnered 
from these companies, HDFC being one of them.  
 
So, in this case, the sales team owing to the closeness with the clients, noticed a discrepancy in our 
communication and convey the same to the marketing team, which in turn tweak their 
communication to help our pitch better. 
 

 
 
Speaker: Priyavrat Sanyal 
 
Another important aspect of sales management is the integration between sales and marketing 
department. Sales and marketing department are the backbone of any organization because one 
department creates the customer need, tell us about the product features, informs the wider set of 
audiences about the product rising and another team makes the product available to the end 
consumers through their stores, dealers and retailers.  
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So, for the success of any organization, there should be a perfect sync between sales and 
marketing. If that sync is not there, there can be cases of product failures. One such example, a 
known FMCG company, their marketing team created a soap, which was much better compared to 
the available options in the market and it was 30% cheaper than the most popular soap at that point 
of time.  
 
The marketing team created the buzz by highlighting these attributes of the product through print 
media, through TV commercials and radio ads; however, the sales team, uh, could not make the 
product available at select stores, they failed to incentivize the channel for selling the product, and 
they also lost an opportunity to make the product available at all the permanent stores.  
 
The result was that product was not accepted in the market, and it was a failure on account of that 
organization. The entire money spent on research and development, marketing, everything went 
into waste. 
 
Now, the second example between the perfect integration between sales and marketing is, can be 
seen from the automobile segment. Hyundai India launched their sub-4 metre compact-SUV venue 
in 2018. The car was launched among much fanfare. The marketing team created a buzz and 
termed as the most contemporary car and also as a connected car. The sales team also responded 
to this created buzz. They ensured proper display of the vehicle at all the dealerships.  
 
They even put incentives for salespeople who were displaying their car to potential customer. The 
result Hyundai when you sold almost one lakh cars in a period of one year. So, a perfect integration 
between sales and marketing team can create wonders for the organization where the organization 
can gain by selling that product, whereas an unsuccessful integration can leave den to 
organizations repute as well as its profit. 
 

 
 
Speaker: Prashant Kapur 
 
Let's take an example of PayTM case study. PayTM wants a better reach and more users. PayTM 
has partnered with Big Bazaar as Big Bazaar sees high footfall across the year. The promotional 
scheme is 5% off on digital payments of bill above rupees 1500, and the scheme has offered at 
more than 295 big Bazaar outlets throughout the country.  
 
Now, let's understand in this entire promotion, what will be the critical role of PayTM marketing 
team and what will be the critical role of PayTM sales team? Let's start with the marketing team. 

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Marketing team here is facilitating the tie-up with the Big Bazaar national marketing team, that will 
be the role number one.  
 
PayTM marketing team will be chatting out objectives of the promotion, revenue targets, customer 
addition target, increase in repeat transaction target, all that will be planned as the budget for this 
entire promotion by the PayTM marketing team. PayTM marketing team will develop a national 
marketing plan, okay, which will have digital marketing promotion plan, which is through apps, 
social media, Facebook. They will have an outdoor marketing plan, which will be around 
newspapers, hoardings, and they will have the more importantly in-store marketing plan at Big 
Bazaar, which will be around promotional material inside the Big Bazaar stores.  
 
Other critical role of PayTM marketing team will be shortlisting national level promotor agency and 
allocation of promoters state-wise and ensuring that each and every promoter is trained about 
PayTM product and how the demonstration is done. So, these are the five roles, which will be 
performed by the PayTM marketing team. Now, let's come to the role of PayTM sales team, which 
will perform in this joint promotion. 
 
PayTM sales team will be beating Big Bazaar operations team in every city and store before the 
promotion is started. They will ensure that in-store display at all 295 outlets is done one night 
before the scheme is started along with the support of marketing team. Sales team will ensure that 
they achieve targets through in-store promoters.  
 
They will need to brief trainer, they will need to brief promoters again and again about the targets, 
about the customer acquisition targets, about the transactions from new customers, and more 
importantly, repeat transactions from existing customers who are already using PayTM product. 
Sales manager will ensure that reward and recognition of promoters is done on a weekly basis so 
that to charge up the promoters and ensure they deliver maximum and achieve the budget, it's laid 
down by the marketing team. 
 

 
 
Speaker: Priyavrat Sanyal 
 
Sales forecasting is important for firm to estimate the demand and also to allocate resources to 
meet the demand. So, precision tool company is into manufacturing of machine tools for various 
manufacturing operations. In order to estimate their demand for machine tools, they relied on a 
mathematical model proposed by one of their analysts ten years back. The model used number of 
employees working in a firm as one of the key variables to estimate the demand.  
 

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Last year, precision tool company found that the model underestimated this demand by 22%. The 
company lost a lot of sales because of that and their resource allocation was also poor. Looking at 
the data, they realize that the key variable of number of employees, which was used in predicting 
the demand is no longer relevant because with technological innovation, customer firms could 
achieve higher manufacturing output with lesser employees.  
 
Now in such a situation, how should precision tools company estimate the sales demand? The way 
forward is to send the customer sales representative to different companies, ask about buyer’s 
requirement, their plan for expansion, and then build an estimation model to predict a reasonably 
acceptable demand. 
 

 
 

 
 
 

 
 
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