A successful debut on the market in conjunction with the large sale of products and services requires a strategy that will combine activities related to sales, marketing, logistics and service.
The crucial process is sales and the choice of its channels that will transmit the product or the service to potential customers.
In the olden days the sales channel was made up of two elements: the sales person and the delivery car. The 21st-century sales strategy comprises a wide range of combinations of various marketing and sales channels which allows for reaching the maximum number of customers and selling the offered products. One must determine the channels that connect to the market which the company wants to enter. Sales channels may be owned exclusively by the given company, but they also may be indirect or altogether independent of the company. As a beginner, each company bases its activities on independent sales channels, i.e. agents, distributors and partners. Such state of affairs is determined by financial limitations which are inevitable at the early stage. However, as the company develops, it has to invest into new sales and distribution channels in order to avoid the phenomenon called “bottleneckâ€, i.e. not sufficient throughput for the offered products or services. The sales costs will surely increase, but so will the number of sold products and the general turnover. This, in turn, will allow for quicker responses to customer needs and full control over the entire sales process.
Specialist IT systems for sales channel management can come in very useful with regard to monitoring and realization of the process. The present-day IT market abounds in companies that offer solutions supporting the marketing and distribution channels which form an integral part of the overall sales strategy. Comarch and its sales management system (ECOD) can serve as the best example in this case. Two modules of the system can prove to be particularly useful. They are ECOD Agent, which provides comprehensive support for points of sale and mobile sales representatives, and ECOD Distribution, which handles communication and reporting within distribution channels.
Tags: distribution channels, Sales Channels, Sales Management