Sales Issue: Improving SA Marketplace; Limited Budget

Introduction:

South Africa has a rapidly improving marketplace. Logically sales force management would be excited to hear this, but, and there’s always a but, there are various elements that influence South Africa’s marketplace that you will read on later in this article. That is why organizations must budget and sometimes that budgets are limited and makes it much more difficult for sales people to do their job.

South African Marketplace:

Reading the news or the financial weekly, headlines pops up such as “Interest hike pressures property market” and “SA tourism pounded from all fronts, index shows”, but all these headlines focusses on the most extreme conditions of our economy.

Yes, South African isn't running on 100% efficiency and yes there is a lot of space for improvement, but we as South African should focus on all the other things that we are busy improving. The city of Pretoria has faster Wi-Fi and internet speed, as the government officials regard internet access as one of the rudimentary services, beneficial to the economy.

Look at the Gautrain, personally one of the better decisions our government have made. Our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is climbing steadily. South Africa’s success in reforming its economic policies is probably best reflected by its GDP figures, which reflected an unprecedented 62 quarters of uninterrupted economic growth between 1993-2007, when the GDP rose by 5.1%. And also in the news, South Africa is the fastest growing green building market in the world.

Rising interest rates has an upside according to Elize Giese, Head of Investment at FNB Business. “The important factor is often overlooked is the opportunity to promote South Africa’s saving culture during an upward rate cycle. South Africa continues to grapple with a saving rate that is significantly lower than 20%; therefore, we should maximize every possibility to build a saving culture.” – Giese.

There are always something going to be pressure on the economy and inflation and bad news ext. the fact still stand with all these good and bad trends, South Africa's marketplace is improving and growing. Slowly, but surely.

That said the above mentioned facts, proves that we, as South Africans, are in a rapidly changing business environment. Salespeople cannot be as single-minded as they were in the past. Salespeople are expected to be agile and flexible these days to adapt to the changing business environment. Salespeople are also challenged to proffer new value propositions.

In a World ruled by strategy, a salesperson/ force must be dynamic, show the agility needed to realize that yesterday’s value propositions may be inappropriate today and the same for tomorrow. At the same time, sales forces cannot forget the strategic thinking that has fostered success even when customers continuously change their way of thinking.

So sales force = Agile.

Agility = being flexible, nimble, fast responding, quick to adapt to change, consider new evidence, change direction, ability to change strategy to offer a new value proposition.

Limited Budget:

Personally, the easiest element to use in negotiations to persuade people to buy a product or a service is money. The saying “Cash is King” is very relevant in the business world and when money is no problem, businesses spare no expense when it comes to training, incentives or state of the art technology to make the a sales job just so much sweeter, but when money is scarce the time for being really innovative with money arises. The good news, as mentioned under the previous headline, the South African marketplace is improving and quality opportunities arises for a sales force make more profit, but then again good news and bad news goes hand in hand and the bad news are that organizations has a limited budget to make the sales force thrive and to do what they are supposed to do, making a profit. There are multiple external elements that influence businesses and that sometimes are the cause to start a sales budget.

Although the significance of the individual element may vary according to the type product and market served, it is generally accepted that the main elements are the rate of growth in the GDP, rate of inflation, level of unemployment, interest rates, disposable income, taxation rate [personal and corporate] and major commodity price movements.

The reason for having a budget and especially a sales budget is to make up for the above mentioned changing elements and to keep making a profit. The sales budget is an estimate of the expenditure required to achieve a firm’s approved sales forecast.

It is imperative that a sales force do every possible thing to assure that they are making their sales targets and build strong relationships with their clients to continue making a profit for their firm. These are some strategies to make sure you reach your sales target; invest time prospecting for NEW business every week, expand your reach, improve your value proposition, improve your questioning skills, ask for referrals, perfect your presentations, gain agreement, keep your name in your prospect’s mind, improve your selling skills, and show customers why they should keep doing business with you.