Sales

Sales is all about getting goods and services to market in order to obtain a profitable return for the business.

Companies sell stocked products (purchased or manufactured internally), buy outs, items made to order, services, repairs, and so on, each of which will generally have a cost and a selling value, so that the profit can be calculated.

Sales can be made via tele- sales, incoming faxes and emails, reps on the road, over a customer counter or via the internet. Each method may require different procedures and treatment. 

Selling prices are becoming more and more complicated, with the need to accommodate price lists, discounts, pricing contracts, special promotions for limited periods, rebates and so on.

Sales analyses and statistics which report on sales activity for a given period (daily, monthly, etc) are vital to managing the sales operation and being able to take remedial action if performance is below expectation.

Business objectives
Typical objectives which businesses set for sales include:

• The ability to identify current and potential customers and to be able to segment them for most effective marketing and sales
• Having a clear sales strategy, plan and budgets
• Setting acceptable sales margins, taking account of discounts and rebates
• The ability to manage routine pricing, special contracts, deals, promotions and rebates
• Setting a sales service level agreement with each customer which takes account of:
        • Partial deliveries or entire order only
        • Back order policy
        • Delivery lead times
        • Minimum order value
• Having effective credit control to reduce bad debts and write offs
• Being able to record and react to lost sales
• Having detailed and reliable sales statistics to be able to analyse sales activity by whatever criteria is required (customer, product, period, etc).

Pitfalls and problems
The pitfalls and problems which can be experienced with sales include the following:

• Customers invoiced at the wrong price (maybe operators forgot about special pricing arrangements).
• Customers receiving their order in dribs and drabs, often at significant delivery cost.
• Orders put on back order and remaining that way until it is too late.
• A lack of communication with customers when there is a problem, with no-one taking responsibility to ensure that customer requirements are met.
• Customer service levels not being monitored and dissatisfied customers are only identified when they have dropped you as a supplier.
• Identifying which customers and products are making the best or worst contribution.
• Haphazard credit control - customers either getting credit when they should not, or not being supplied when they should be.

The Computer Bird takes care to include the business objectives and typical pitfalls when implementing systems or assisting SYSPRO clients. It is our experience that SYSPRO systems, correctly implemented and with appropriate user training, are an extremely effective business tool.

Please contact us if you would like to probe any of these issues further.