Every business owner knows the importance of sales for a company, it is the source of income for the whole company. If the business can’t make a good sales, it can’t be successful no matter how hard it try to cut the costs. How can we systematically manage sales and make sales predictable rather than random?

Many books about sales provide a wide variety of methods, but many authors focus on the selling skills and how to be a successful salesperson, not a sales manager. Here are several major categories of sales management:

1. Sales Channel
2. Sales Pipeline / Funnel
3. Recruitment, training, compensation or commission for salespersons

Sales Channel

There are many different sales channels available and companies also need to choose a sales channel that suits their strategy according to their own products or services.

• Physical sales vs online sales
• Direct store vs cooperative distribution
• Branch opening vs franchising
• Long-term consignment vs temporary shop
• Direct sales vs through intermediaries, brokers

Different sales channels have their own unique aspects, as well as pros and cons, that won’t be discussed further in this article. Each business owner must go through a detailed analysis when choosing a sales channel to make the most suitable choice for the business.

However, I found that many business owners ignored an important area after choosing a sales channel: channel management. Channel management means that there is a set of methods to manage the sales channel, and the purpose is also very simple, that is, the sales channel can achieve the expected sales.

Channel Management

Step 1:

To do a good job in channel management, the first step is to make a reasonable sales forecast. The managers can make an annual channel sales forecast based on past data, current economic conditions, government policies, the unique operating environment of each channel, as well as company strategies.

Step 2:

Once you have a full-year sales forecast, the next step is to break it down into quarterly and monthly forecasts. Remember, this is not simply dividing the full year number by 4 or 12. This should include many factors: seasonality of merchandise sales, marketing activities, number of salespeople, etc.

Step 3:

Communicate to the channel regularly to understand the sales situation, and analyze the reasons together regardless of whether the sales are up to standard. In this way, the managers can obtain first-hand market information, also to link their sales targets with the channel, and become the channel’s target. Finally, it is necessary to discuss the support that the channel needs to see if the company can cooperate.

Step 4:

With the information provided by the sales channel, managers must integrate the information, take a comprehensive view of the overall situation, and then make the next round of adjustments. One of the most important steps is to compare it with the original sales forecast, analyze which channel is up to standard and which one is inferior, what is the reason, what is the solution, whether a solution can be launched next month, and see if it needs to adjust the monthly or full year sales forecast.

If business owners and managers can make the above-mentioned four steps into a habit and repeat them every month, every quarter and every year, I believe that channel management can greatly increase the predictability of business sales, and business owners can have a better control and manage sales in different ways.

So now, we have talked about how to make sales in a more predictable way, business owners can then use various approaches to control and manage the sales volume. Of course, we are not saying that channel management is the only factor in the equation. In the next sharing, we are going to talk more about the second part – sales pipeline and sales funnel.