Assam ASSEB HS Sales Management & Advertising cheat sheet

Sales management is the planning, direction and control of personal selling, including recruiting, selecting, training, motivating, supervising and evaluating the sales force.

Personal selling is face-to-face (or voice/online synchronous) persuasion in which the seller diagnoses buyer needs and matches a solution; it is the only promotional tool that closes the sale and collects payment.

AIDA describes buyer readiness stages: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action; the salesperson's task shifts from attracting attention early to triggering action late.

The needs-satisfaction (problem-solving) approach outperforms the selling-formula approach when buyers are sophisticated and products are technically complex.

Relationship selling builds repeat purchase and referral; transaction selling optimises a single exchange. Cost per retained customer is lower than cost of acquiring a new one.

Unique selling proposition (USP): the one benefit a competitor cannot or does not claim; a claim that any rival can copy is not a USP.

Sales volume alone is a poor performance measure; use contribution margin, gross profit per order, or profit per salesperson to avoid selling unprofitable volume.

Difference between marketing and selling: marketing starts with the customer's need and works backward to the product; selling starts with the product and works forward to the customer.

Standard seven steps: prospecting and qualifying, pre-approach, approach, presentation and demonstration, handling objections, closing, follow-up and servicing.

Qualifying criteria are usually need, authority, ability to pay and readiness (sometimes remembered as M-A-N: Money, Authority, Need).

Prospecting sources: referrals, cold canvassing, directories, trade shows, digital enquiries, existing-customer upgrades and centre-of-influence contacts.

Objection types: genuine (real price or fit problem), misconception, hidden, and stalling. Acknowledge, clarify, respond, then confirm the objection is resolved before moving on.

Closing techniques include direct request, assumptive close, alternative-choice close, summary close, and trial close used earlier to test readiness.

Presentation structure: feature means what the product has, advantage means what it does, benefit means what the buyer gains. Benefits drive purchase; features alone rarely do.

Follow-up after the sale reduces cognitive dissonance, secures repeat business and generates referrals; it is a selling step, not an afterthought.

Sales presentation must be adapted to buyer type: economic buyers respond to ROI and payback; technical buyers respond to specifications and proof.

Line organization: authority flows directly from top to bottom; simple and fast but overloads senior managers as the firm grows.

Line and staff organization adds specialist staff (sales training, market research, sales analysis) who advise but do not command line salespeople.

Functional organization gives each salesperson several specialists to report to (e.g. separate advertising and sales managers); it violates unity of command and risks conflicting instructions.

Geographic organization assigns each salesperson an exclusive territory; lowest travel cost and clearest accountability, best when product lines are similar.

Product organization suits firms with diverse, technically different lines; risk is duplicated calls on the same customer by different product salespeople.

Customer or market organization serves distinct buyer groups (institutional, retail, government); specialists understand buyer needs but territories overlap and costs rise.

Span of control: the number of salespeople one manager can effectively supervise; wider spans need more experienced staff and better reporting systems.

Territory design principles: equal sales potential or equal workload, contiguous areas, compact shape to minimise travel, and adequate potential to earn a fair income.

Recruitment attracts a pool of applicants; selection screens them. Sources are internal (promotion, transfer) and external (advertising, agencies, campus, referrals, job portals).

Selection sequence typically: preliminary interview, application blank, tests (aptitude, interest, personality, knowledge), in-depth interview, reference check, medical examination, final offer.

A test is valid if it predicts job performance and reliable if it gives consistent scores on repetition; a reliable test can still be invalid.

Structured interviews with the same questions and rating scales reduce interviewer bias compared with unstructured conversation.

Training needs analysis identifies gaps at organisation, task and individual level; training content follows from the gap, not from what is easy to teach.

Common training methods: on-the-job coaching, job rotation, apprenticeship, lectures, case studies, role plays, and field training with a supervisor.

Motivation theories used in sales: Maslow's hierarchy, Herzberg's two-factor theory (hygiene factors prevent dissatisfaction; motivators drive effort), Vroom's expectancy theory (effort to performance to reward to value).

Compensation designs: straight salary gives control and security; straight commission gives maximum incentive but weak service and loyalty; a salary-plus-incentive combination balances both.

Sales forecast: estimate of expected sales for a period under a stated marketing plan. Sales potential: maximum achievable if full effort and resources were applied. Sales quota: a target assigned to a salesperson or unit.

Quotas should be set above forecast for stretch but below potential to remain achievable; a quota that exceeds potential demotivates.

Forecasting methods: qualitative (jury of executive opinion, sales force composite, Delphi, buyer intention survey) and quantitative (moving average, exponential smoothing, trend projection, regression, test marketing).

Sales force composite aggregates each salesperson's estimate; accurate on local knowledge but prone to deliberate understatement if estimates feed quotas.

Delphi method uses repeated anonymous questionnaires with controlled feedback to reach consensus, avoiding dominance by senior voices.

Sales budget is a financial plan of expected sales revenue and selling expenses; the control loop is set standard, measure actual, compute variance, analyse cause, take corrective action.

Useful ratios: sales per salesperson, calls per day, call-to-order ratio, average order size, selling expense ratio to sales, and gross margin per call.

ABC analysis of customers ranks accounts by contribution; A accounts justify intensive personal selling, C accounts are better served by low-cost channels.

Advertising is paid, non-personal, sponsored communication about a product, service or idea through mass media to a defined audience.

Five elements of an advertisement: the message, the source (sponsor), the medium, the receiver, and the feedback or response.

Functions: inform (new products), persuade (competitive choice), remind (mature products), and reinforce (post-purchase reassurance).

Advertising is non-personal and one-way with delayed feedback, unlike personal selling which is interactive and immediate.

Classification by purpose: product advertising versus institutional (corporate image) advertising; primary demand advertising promotes a whole category, selective demand advertising promotes a brand.

Classification by medium: print, broadcast, outdoor, transit, direct mail, digital and point-of-purchase.

Advertising does not itself create demand from nothing; it channels existing needs and works jointly with price, distribution and selling.

AIDA and the hierarchy-of-effects models place advertising's task at awareness and interest stages, while personal selling dominates conviction and action.

Reach is the number of distinct individuals exposed to a schedule in a period; frequency is the average number of exposures per reached individual; impressions (gross rating points) = reach percentage times average frequency.

Cost per thousand (CPM) = (cost of space or time divided by audience in thousands); it compares media efficiency, not effectiveness.

Media mix selection criteria: reach, frequency, selectivity, cost, flexibility, lead time, longevity, prestige, and clutter.

Newspapers offer high local coverage, short life and poor reproduction; magazines offer selectivity, long life and high-quality colour but long lead time.

Television combines sight, sound and motion for high impact but has high absolute cost, short exposure and heavy clutter; radio is cheap, flexible and local but audio only.

Outdoor media deliver repeated local exposure at low cost per exposure but carry a brief message and limited audience selectivity.

Digital media allow precise targeting and measurable response but suffer ad-blocking, fraud and banner blindness.

Media planning sequence: set media objectives, choose media classes, select specific vehicles, decide timing (continuous, flighting, pulsing), then buy and evaluate.

Copy elements: headline, subhead, body copy, slogan or tagline, call to action, and signature or logo.

Headline functions: attract attention, select the audience, and lead into the body copy; it carries most of the stopping power.

Layout principles: balance, contrast, proportion, movement, unity and emphasis; the typical path of the eye is top-left to bottom-right.

Common layout formats: Mondrian (grid), picture-window, all-copy, and copy-heavy editorial style.

Copywriting rules: write to one reader, use the active voice, prefer concrete words, keep sentences short, and make one single proposition per advertisement.

Creativity in advertising means originality plus relevance to the brand and the audience; originality without relevance is mere novelty.

Appeals used in copy: rational (economy, durability, performance), emotional (fear, humour, pride, love) and moral (social responsibility).

Test criteria for copy: attention value, comprehension, credibility, persuasiveness and recall; a memorable advertisement that miscommunicates the brand has failed.

Budgeting methods: affordable method, percentage-of-sales, competitive-parity, objective-and-task, and marginal-return analysis.

Objective-and-task method is theoretically strongest: define objectives, determine tasks needed, and cost them; the others set the budget first and fit objectives to it.

Percentage-of-sales makes advertising a consequence of past sales rather than a driver of future sales, and cuts spending exactly when sales fall.

Competitive parity assumes competitors know best and ignores differences in objectives and resources.

Measuring effectiveness: pre-testing (copy testing, focus groups, portfolio tests) before launch and post-testing (recall, recognition, attitude change, sales results) after.

Recall tests measure what respondents remember unaided; recognition tests measure what they recognise when shown the advertisement; recognition scores are typically higher.

Ethics in advertising: no false or misleading claims, no concealed facts, no offensive or indecent content, no exploitation of children, no disparagement of competitors.

Regulatory context: advertising in India is governed by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) code and consumer protection law; comparative claims must be substantiated.

Marginal analysis sets advertising spend where marginal revenue from advertising equals marginal cost; it requires measurable response data.

Sales-response to advertising is often S-shaped: small budgets have little effect, then returns rise, then diminishing returns set in.

Advertising elasticity measures percentage change in sales for a one per cent change in advertising spend; a value above one indicates elastic response.

Share-of-voice logic: a brand's share of advertising spend in a category tends to track its market share over time.

Pre-testing methods include consumer juries, dummy magazines, theatre tests and physiological measures; each is artificial and risks bias.

Sales-effect measurement is confounded by price, distribution and seasonality; controlled experiments or matched-market tests isolate advertising's contribution.

Puffery (vague subjective praise such as 'the best in town') is legally tolerated in many jurisdictions, whereas a false factual claim is not.

Ethical test for a claim: is it true, is it substantiated by evidence, and would the average consumer be misled by the overall impression, not just the literal words?