Sales planning and operation assignment

Selling to consumers or other businesses, developing an effective sales strategy is the first step to persuading customers to part with their money. In particular, we need to identify which customers to focus the efforts on, the sales methods that will be use to reach them and how we will price the product or service.

Kerin, R. A., Hartley, S. W., & Rudelius, W. (2013). Marketing. (11th ed.). New York, New

Ferrell, O.C., & Hartline, M.D. (2014). Marketing Strategy: Text and Cases (6th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western/Cengage Learning

Perreault, William D., Joseph P. Cannon, and E. Jerome McCarthy. Basic Marketing: A Marketing Strategy Planning Approach. 19th ed. N.p.: McGraw Hill, n.d.

Perreault, Jr., W.D., Cannon, J.P., & McCarthy, E.J. (2011). Basic Marketing: A Marketing Strategy Planning Approach [University of Phoenix Custom Edition eBook]. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, MKT/421 website.

 ReferencesKerin, R. A., Peterson, R. A. (2013). Strategic marketing problems cases and comments (13th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall

Marketing is a management function which involves creating, communicating and delivering value for an organisation’s customers (Kotler, Brown, Burton, Deans & Armstrong (2010). Although many earlier academics define marketing as merely a process of satisfying customer needs in order to gain profits, more recent developments of the definition include its inherent connection with delivering superior value to customers in order to maintain ongoing relationships (Webster, 1992).

Marketing strategy is a method of focusing an organization's energies and resources on a course of action which can lead to increased sales and dominance of a targeted market niche. A marketing strategy combines product development, promotion, distribution, pricing, relationship management and other elements; identifies the firm's marketing goals, and explains how they will be achieved, ideally within a stated timeframe. Marketing strategy determines the choice of target market segments, positioning, marketing mix, and allocation of resources. It is most effective when it is an integral component of overall firm strategy, defining how the organization will successfully engage customers, prospects, and competitors in

Ferrell, O. C., & Hartline, M. D. (2014). Marketing strategy: Text and cases. Mason, OH: South-Western/Cengage Learning.

Walker, Orville C., Harper W. Boyd, Jr., John Mullins, Jean-Claude Larreche. (2003). Marketing Strategy - A Decision-Focused Approach. 4th Edition. McGraw-Hill. New York, NY.

The essence of marketing is value creation, where the goal is a long-term satisfaction by building relationships and attracting new customers by offering better value than the competition. Because marketing is based on exchanges where the objective is for all parties in the exchange to feel satisfied and gain some kind of value (Jobber and Ellis-Chadwick, 2013).

Once the sales plan has been developed, tactics should be thought of on how to implement the plan. For example, a business could find customers in a new market segment or train sales staff to upsell premium features. According to Business Queensland (2017), the sales plan identifies how the business will approach and sell to its customers. The sales plan sets out the approach to attracting new customers, a plan to increase existing customer sales and a plan for achieving targets and increasing profit

Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S., & Kotler, P. (2012). Principles of Marketing. Frenchs Forest: Pearson Australia.

Marketing has become more and more important, especially as the purposes of marketing expanded into performing marketing researches. Through marketing researches, it is asserted that marketing starts with a real customer need. Classic marketing, has, nonetheless, focused on making the need that will draw customers, and this stresses the advertising power of marketing (Woodall 2007, p.1284). This is also called the sales concept of marketing (Woodall 2007, p.1285). An example is how advertising lures people into buying a brand, because of the

On the other hand, the managing marketing implementation is the process that helps customers to keep in mind the strengths of the company. In order to accomplish this, three stages are required to be followed such as an analysis of the markets and trading environment, determination of core markets and brand positioning and last, but not least, setting up flexible programmes for implementation. Controlling the marketing plan should include the flexibility of objectives, empowerment for environmental changes and monitoring, in order to allow new opportunities for the business.