Course Description
Do you want to become a Sales Manager or improve your management skills?
Then this course is for YOU!
Motivating employees is often tiring and time consuming work. As a manager, you provide incentives, set goals, acknowledge top producers, even use consequences or threats. Yet, when that external stimulation is no longer present, people have a tendency to slip back into their old ways: not moving unless someone is there to push.
In this course I will present you with the "basic" principles and practices of sales management. You will see that as a sales manager, you wear many hats; in a way, a sales manager needs to be a "jack-of-all-trades." Sales managers are planners, strategists, tacticians, organizers, forecasters, personnel specialists, trainers, communicators, motivators, leaders, data analysts, salespeople, employees, bosses, decision-makers, and often spouses and parents.
So take the first step to gain the knowledge needed to:
- become a better manager and lead a high performance, self-motivated team that takes the initiative without having to constantly push
- Communicate more powerfully and permanently eliminate communication breakdowns.
- Use "pull strategies" rather than "push strategies" to accelerate team productivity and motivate employees
- Identify and eliminate unproductive management habits that actually create the problems you are working so diligently to avoid.
- Develop a greater level of awareness that will enable you to anticipate and prevent problems that slow down productivity, damage good will, cause stress and waste time, money and energy.
- Dramatically reduce turnover.
Course Requirements
Course Goals
The specific functions and activities you will study include:
Application of the Golden Rule to business and sales.
Developing the strategy needed to reach sales goals.
Understanding the roles and activities of each sales job.
Examining the markets.
Properly designing and organizing sales forces around markets.
Planning sales efforts.
Staffing the personnel needs of the sales force.
Training sales personnel.
Directing people's efforts through effective motivation, compensation, and leadership.
Analyzing and evaluating sales efforts.
Rather than viewing sales management as a combination of separate functions and activities (such as staffing, training, and motivating), we will view these functions and activities as having symbiotic relationships with each other. For example, training can motivate people. All functions and activities will be viewed as dynamic processes, composed of numerous interrelated parts, all aimed at helping the organization reach its sales objectives.
Course Materials
Textbook: Charles M. Futrell, Sales Management: Teamwork, Leadership, and Technology, sixth edition. Provided free of charge to the student.
The use of the textbook's onlne version has been authorized by the author.
You can also download the textbook "for public use" at http://futrell-www.tamu.edu/sm_home.html
Grading Policy
Your final course grade will be determined by adding your total points earned -- including bonus points --.
72% = 16 Assignment (4.5 points each)
16% = Mid-Course Exam
16% = Final Exam
104% (4 Bonus Points)
Disclaimer
You understand and accept that distance education (or Internet education in general) is a new technology that may not be suitable to everyone's learning needs. By creating, joining, and/or participating in an online class you acknowledge that it is a different and somewhat experimental method of learning.
