Major assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Major assignment - Essay Example These products are customized for specialized buildings. SSI is a small division company with a closed loop organizational chart. The company is headed by Charlie who is the chief executive officer. There are three salespersons, two engineers and three project manager who look after the entire bidding process. The production department includes 45 welders, four supervisor and one plant manager. The shipping department consists of 10 employees including one shipping manager. In order to assist the administration processes, the company has two secretaries and one controller (Castleberry and Tanner, 2001). Personal Selling process of the organization The company manufactures custom steel products for specialised buildings. Structural Steel is into business to business marketing. It is a commercial transaction between two or more different businesses, for example between a wholesaler and a manufacturer. B2B transactions are generally characterised by high volume of transactions, higher i nvolvement of sales and marketing team during negotiations and much high value of money involved (Katou and Budhwar, 2008). It is a complex and long process of buying and tends to be based on client-company relationship. As a result of the amount of money and time spent during transactions and negotiations, B2B features high loyalty for brands. Also, the sellers in the B2B process are required to have numerous meetings and interactions with the customers and clients during the process of negotiation. Industrial trade shows, conferences, exhibitions and online communication sites are few of the places where business to business companies interacts with both prospects and customers (Parvinen et al., 2013). In the present case employees who are directly involved in communication with the clients are the sales persons, shipping department and engineers. The major interaction with the client is however done by the sales person, as they represent the organisation. During the process of ne gotiation, the organisation may involve engineers, shipping managers and sometimes accountants, in order to make the clients clear about the various internal processes and requirements. The purchasing process in B2B marketing is riskier than in business to customer (B2C) marketing, as the transaction amount is more and entire transaction process is based on exact quantities and products (Harrison, 1998). Purchasing process in B2B involves committee meetings as decisions are driven by specifications and expert advice is required all the time. Thus in case of Structural Steel, the personal selling process involves sales person, finance department, engineering department and many times even the CEO of the company. Sales management process Sales management process involved all stages from cold calling, prospecting, negotiation to shipping of final products and billing. It includes an entire cycle where clients orders specific products or services and the company delivers it and gets the payment (Age, 2011). A sales management process is characterised by many features. It includes objectives and goals for departments, staff members and the entire organisations. These objectives and goals must be discussed with every involved and connected staff. Sales management process is a closed loop activity where performance of one department is directly related to another. Also known as sales pipeline, sales management