Competitive Selling in a Surplus Market

Abstract

COMPETITIVE selling requires a sales plan. Selling cannot be approached in a hit-or-miss fashion—grabbing at straws, putting out fires, vacillating between extremes. If it is, the sales program may turn out to be a heterogeneous collection of odds and ends which must later be untangled. We may find that sales are a flash in the pan and not sales that stick to our ribs year in and year out. There are three fundamentals for a successful and balanced sales program: Good home office sales strategy Organized hard work in the field Full support of management and plant Each of these fundamentals is essential. Under the American free enterprise system there is one supreme measure of sales success, and that can be easily summed up as A good sales strategy, then, must be aimed at making good profits. Sales management, in cooperation with general management, can select that sales course which can ...