Marketing Quesions

 Q1-Mr. Thomas is the vice president(sales) of a soft drink company called Paper Boat. In order to bring out best sales results, he has to complete recruitment and selection for the sales force in the company. Discuss analytically as to how Mr. Thomas should go about it considering every important point(s). 

Ans. According to the case, Mr. Thomas is the vice president of sales department in soft drink company. The soft drink company is known by Paper Boat. In order to increase the revenue, he has to increase the sale of soft drink obviously. To increase the sales, he has to recruit new employees in the company. The steps Thomas have to taken for recruitment and selection process are as follow: 1.) Preparation of job description: A job description is a document or statement that clearly defines the important of job requirements, job duties, job responsibilities, and skills required to perform a specific role. Here Thomas have to mentions all the important points that on what basis he will evaluate the candidates. A more detailed job description will cover how success is measured in the role. So, it can be used during performance evaluations of each Candidate’s. Thomas have to mentions the title of the job as a salesman for a soft drink. After this he has to mentions all types of job duties and responsibilities, what type of work they have to perform, which qualification is required to be eligible for job. in which locations he has to play a role as a salesman and to whom they have to submit their reports.

2.) Identification of sources of recruitment and methods of communication: Thomas have to post this description in the officials’ website of the company and make some banners. So, that lots of people get aware. Thomas also do communicate this information to the company staff. He may appoint recruitment agencies or human resource management of the company for this task. Even he can publish this job description in newspaper because maximum people read newspaper daily. They also do advertisement of the job description.

3.) Designing an effective application form and preparing a short-list: when Thomas getting receiving application, the next process is to select those applications who have some experience. If a candidate has no experience but the qualifications is excellent and fit for the company, he has to definitely shortlist it. 

4.) Interviewing: After shortlist the candidate, the next step is to take an interview. Many companies prefer to take two interviews to evaluate the candidate. They check the body poster of the candidate, how he speaks, appearance, fitness and manner of candidate. Is he being mature or not? Sense of responsibility. The interviewer may use different kinds of techniques to evaluate the candidates like Playback technique in which interviewer speak some words to candidate in order to elicit the reason for what has been said, The use of rewards in which interviewer evaluate the candidate that he makes an eye contact or not, he checks that candidate have do nodding the head or not. The use of silence is that when a candidate replies to important questions uninformatively or not in good way because of uncomfortable, nervousness or for the sake of impressing to interviewer by hook or cook and doing some mistake and many more techniques.

5.) Use of supplementary selection aids: In this technique, Thomas interviewer have to take some test of the candidate like he may give some pictures to candidate to evaluate that what these pictures represent. This test also identifies the individual personality traits. 

Q2-Mahindra Electric vehicle company wants to set up sales organization structure and design sales territory for upcoming new electric vehicles. If you are the sales head of the company, suggest suitable sales organization structure and how will you design sales territory for it? 

Ans. According to the question, Mahindra is going to establish electric vehicle company. So, we have to set up the suitable sales organization structure because of the sales head of the company. Sales organization structure refers to the design of the sales team. Mahindra electric vehicles may use an inside or outside sales model, geographic or industry territory approach, product specialization structure. In order to design the sales organization structure and sales territory, we have to plan first the location that where we can setup the new electric vehicles company.

After this we have to divide the organization into subunits or department i.e., Mahindra tyre manufacturing department, Mahindra Electric vehicle charger manufacturing department, Mahindra Electric Vehicle mirror manufacturing department, etc. Then we have to set the location of each department so, that from manufacturing to out of the vehicles from company will become smoother. I mean to say that the setup of each Mahindra department in such a way that from raw material to finishing of vehicles should be smoother and compactible. This will save the time when everything is planned and setup.

After this the basic purpose of Mahindra is to reduce the barriers. The employees must have a good coordination among all whether they work in different departments respectively. This is also related to cross functional teams which plays a role in different department and try to make a good coordination. So that information pass smoothly. Geographical Structure: Mahindra new electric vehicle have to organize sales team by geography or territory allows each salesperson to develop familiarity with a specific geographic location. This will help to build a good relationship between each department. They can build rapport with local businesses, get to know regional or local competitors and track target accounts. Each salesperson in Mahindra is assigned a territory over which to have a sole responsibility for sales achievement. So that sales should be an effectiveness. But electric vehicles are now a day become an advance technology which is somehow consider as eco-friendly because it creates less pollution. This is the advantage of each salesman use to promote the Mahindra electric vehicles by influence the customer by showing the benefits of the products. Product specialization structure: Like Mahindra Electric Vehicles is deals with different category of products i.e., they also supply spare parts of vehicles in market. Their decision-making unit of the buying organizations are different for each product group. A potential downside of implementing this structure is that reps may focus added on the features of the products they are selling and not the best solution for the customer.

Q3- Philips company decides to launch its LCD TV in rural markets of north Indian market. Discuss analytically the sales forecasting techniques that you apply for estimating sales in the respective market keeping in mind the type of market. 

Ans. According to the question, Philips want to expand his business by selling LCD TV in rural markets of north India. Sale forecasting is the process of estimating future upcoming sales. Accurate sales forecasts enable companies to make informed business decisions and predict short-term and long-term performance of the company. Companies can base their forecasts on past sales data, economic trends and industry-wide comparisons. Survey of Buyers: Philips aims to launch LCD TV in rural markets because maximum villager used the old types of television for their entertainment, to watch news channels or else. This process is done by doing survey. Let’s suppose that if Philips provide LCD TV in rural areas by giving a offer that if they will purchase a set of two television 20% would be off and a demonstrator will come their home to provide demo of LCD TV and also installment charges will 20% off then definitely maximum villagers try to influence their friends, neighborhood, relatives to do purchase because if they purchase only a single set of LCD TV it will cost around Rs. 15000/- (suppose amount) and manufacturing cost of one TV Rs. 9000/- company pay. If villagers buy two TV then they have to pay Rs. 24000/-. When Philips make this type of strategy to influence customer by showing that you will save around Rs. 6000/- people will definitely buy it. 

Furthermore, they will tell all the unique feature points or unique selling points to customer it will boost the sales. Experts Opinions: In order to make more profits, Philips must have to take the opinions of experts or people who indulge in the rural markets. Now Diwali is coming. Villagers always have a craze to read the pamphlets, if Philips make some pamphlets and banners will also increase the sale. Only one lit is need to make a fire. Market test method: In this methods, before launching a LCD TV directs into a market in large quantity, they have to conduct a direct market test. On the basis of its outcome, sales forecast is made. This method may be used by the helps of salesman hardwork or dealer who regularly doing marketing in rurals areas. If Philips gets the profit according to sales forecast, then they have to increase their productions and manufacture more units of TV in order to make a profit by delivering a TV in a rural market.