Sales and Marketing (Departmental Plan)

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Sales and Marketing (Departmental Plan) The company intends to double its level of sales from the current $5 million to $10 million in sales. This is an uphill task because it implies that everyone will be obliged to double their efforts, including the sales and marketing departments. In addition, there is the need to refine the manner in which the activities are done and improve on the strategy in general. For example, it has been unveiled that only 40 per cent of the sale's representative's time is spent interacting or selling to prospects and the customers. As such, improving sales productivity and performance has been a challenge for the sales leaders to solve.

Strategic Departmental Objectives attainable for the Next 3 Months Refinement of the activities of the marketing and sales team will require an overhaul of the sales activities across the board. There is a need to lay consistent sales processes and strategies. The factors that prohibit the salespeople from taking advantage of the entire workday should be dealt with upfront. Sales activities are also to be measured and tracked. The department has not been able to rationalize and measure sales activities and has, therefore, lost track of turning the key performance indicators into action points that can help the company improve. Changes ought to be done within the shortest time possible, considering the fact that there is only a timeline of three months to reach the goal. The department will therefore root its activities on the following three objectives; 1. Constant innovation and embracing technology to maximize the productivity of the salespeople 2. Consistent training of the marketing and sales employees in order to enhance their workmanship, concentration and increase conversion rates amid pressure to deliver.

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3. Develop and use the key performance indicators to track and measure the sales activities and leverage the information into instant results(as evidenced by an increase in sales) The above objectives are aligned with the corporate goal. The first objective is tailored towards improving efficiency and boosting the morale of the team in an effort to double the sales. The second objective is tailored towards orienting the departmental team and instilling the knowledge they need to be in a position to deliver the expected high result. Finally, the third objective is meant to help the departmental team instantly evaluate the progress and results at any given time and make the necessary adjustments whenever the need arises (Arnett & Wittmann, 2014).

Support Activities needed in Order to Achieve Each Goal In order to achieve each goal, strategic activities should be put in place for each objective. In the first objective, innovation and use of technology will entail social selling, whereby the sales team's profiles will be expected to be top tier. There should be a plan to connect to more of the target buyers and get referred to those target buyers. Another activity will be ensuring a customer aligned sales process to ensure that the company sells the manner the customer wants to buy as opposed to selling the way they want to sell. The second objective, which is about training, will revolve around the use of e-learning for convenience purposes and tapping the buddy system. The two activities are meant to ensure that the teams learn from the best performing teams and that minimal time is spent training. For the last objective, dashboards should be used to help visualize trends to gain valuable insights into each salesperson's activitybased metrics (Ingram et al., 2019). The second activity will be coming up with the most important key performance indicators.

Timeline and Milestones that Support Each Goal

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The three objectives are expected to be achieved within 90 days or three months, after which the company would be expected to implement and consistently evaluate the results. The innovations and technologies will be piloted within the first month and expected to be installed and become functional during the second month. The training will take place for the entire three months, whereby all the e-learning platforms will be in place during the first month, while the participants will be assigned to buddies and mentors during the second month, after which active on-the-job learning will be taking place. The development of the key performance indicators will be done during the first month. The following Gantt chart gives a summary of the timeline and the milestones that support each goal.

Activity Goal 1 Piloting of tech.

Operationalizatio n Goal 2 E-learning plat.

Buddies and mentor Trainin g Goal 3 K.P.I

Month

Month

Month

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Department’s Reorganization that is designed to respond to the Business Challenge The department will have to be reorganized in such a way that there are more effective teams, and this will entail employing more staff members in the department. New technologies are being implemented, while the existing sales and marketing teams will need mentors and buddies that they can look up to. This implies that more competent people with a proven track record should be recruited. There would be reshufflement of the sales and marketing teams so that new energy is induced into the teams and that the teams can benefit from the new leaderships when the team leaders are reshuffled (Gonzalez & Claro, 2019). However, leaders will be brought in and lead the teams in the long run.

Critical decision and the Top Consideration Associated with it The critical decision is to get new team leaders. The team leaders' recruitment process will be vigorous because there is a need to get employees with a proven track record and a high profile. The employees will also be actively involved in refining the plan that will be in place.

70% of the success rate of this plan depends on these employees. They will be working with the current team leaders because they completely take over these dockets. The new team leaders should also be ready and willing to lead their teams to the field and get direct feedback from the customers and the potential customers.

Assumptions It is assumed that the competition remains the same such that as the company puts new initiatives in place, the competitors are still using their strategies and are not able to react to the new initiatives instantly. Another assumption is that the company will be able to meet all the costs that are likely to emerge, which had not been anticipated before. For instance, the installed

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technologies may need replacement or maintenance, thus forcing the company to stretch beyond the estimated budget.

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References Arnett, D. B., & Wittmann, C. M. (2014). Improving marketing success: The role of tacit knowledge exchange between sales and marketing. Journal of Business Research, 67(3), 324-331.

Gonzalez, G. R., & Claro, D. P. (2019). How intrafirm intermediary salespeople connect sales to marketing and product development. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47(5), 795-814.

Ingram, T. N., LaForge, R. W., Avila, R. A., Schwepker, C. H., & Williams, M. R. (2019). Sales management: Analysis and decision making. Routledge.