Commonly, sales focuses on volume or revenue and misses out on the bottom line and directing sales effort towards optimising profitability. This requires an understanding finance, how individual customers contribute and strategically directing selling effort. This workshop addresses the dry issue of financial and commercial acumen in a in a fun and relevant way. Fun because of the use of a business simulation and relevant because it is for sales and marketing management and can be run by your staff.

SALES CALLS covers sales objectives, customer strategies, call planning & targeting and measuring sales performance.

Participants have to decide how frequently to call on their customers. In doing this they must take into account individual customer potential, the current relationship, profitability, risk and work load.

After the participants have made their decisions, the simulator evaluates calling success and produces a report showing market share, revenue, profits and return on assets. Using Activity Based Costing, the simulator treats each customer as a profit centre taking into account selling and servicing costs and capital employed funding debtors (or accounts receivable).

In deciding call strategy, participants will need to realise their goals must be wider than just building sales and must include building profits and profitability. Also, they will need to classify their customers based on current and future potential, growth etc..

Sales Calls is ideal for sales and marketing courses and sales conferences.

Originally designed in 1983, Sales Calls has been in use since then and recently has been completely revised incorporating our latest design paradigms).

SUMMARY

KEY LEARNING: The simulation covers these issues:

• SELLING OBJECTIVES
• MEASURING SALES PERFORMANCE
• ANALYSING SALES DATA
• CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES
• CALL PLANNING & TARGETING
• TEAM WORKING

DURATION: Three hours. This short duration allow the simulation to fit into most course time-tables (even the "difficult" after dinner slot).

TARGET AUDIENCE: The simulations are designed to be used by trainees, junior management up to middle management, functional specialists and supervisors. Or, as an ice breaker, for all levels up to senior management.

METHOD: After a short briefing the training group is divided into several teams of three to five participants. Each consider the problem facing them and then make a series of decisions that are fed, by the team, into their own microcomputer that simulates their effect. The results are printed for the team to analyse before making their next decisions. This decision-making cycle should be repeated for at least eight periods. At the end of the simulation phase the teams reunite to discuss and compare results.

The simulations may be used with any number of teams and, if necessary, up to three teams may share a microcomputer.

AVAILABILITY: This simulation is available off-the-shelf and a comprehensive Trainer's Pack is provided allowing trainers with little or no experience with simulations to run the simulation.

KEY LEARNING

SELLING OBJECTIVES

Sales Calls is designed to widen sales people's views of selling objectives. So, besides having objectives in terms of revenue and market share, participants must consider profits, profitability and risk. Further, not only must participant's maximise the results for their area as a whole but also set objectives for each individual customer.

MEASURING SALES PERFORMANCE

Depending on the version, sales performance is measured in terms of market share, revenue, gross profit, contribution, return on assets, revenue/call and profit/call.

ANALYSING SALES DATA

In deciding how many calls to make on individual customers, participants must rank customers, analyse growth and profit opportunities both for the current period and the long term. Analyses that investigate the patterns of customer potential, sales revenue, profit & costs, debts, the impact of calling, changes in customer need etc..

CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES

When developing their calling strategies, participants will probably need to categorise customers according to their potential and the current penetration. They may wish to divide customers into key and minor customers. Key customers that can be sub-divided into those where there is potential for growth, those where growth potential is negligible but revenue must be maintained and those where growth is such that the customer may become dominant. Then, for each category, participants must decide calling rates to develop the business.

CALL PLANNING & TARGETING

The strategies are implemented and refined through the participants deciding the number of calls to be made on individual customers, entering these, simulation and analysing the outcomes before deciding the next period's calls.

TEAM WORKING

With participants working in small teams, they have the opportunity to share experience and knowledge, present and promote different viewpoints and develop their people skills.

DOCUMENTATION

Documentation is provided separately for the UK and US Versions MS Word format and comprises:

The Participants' Manual provides, for the participants. a description of the simulation, a description of their task and how to use the software.

The Background Notes describe the simulation for the trainer and may be used as a handout to the participants at the end of the simulation. (Please contact us to receive a copy of these).

The Decision Form is provided for where teams will submit their decisions to a third party to enter (useful when there is a limited number of computers).

The Work Sheets are provided to help teams segment their customers during or at the end of the simulation.

The Record Sheets are optional and are provided to allow teams to keep a long term record of results on a customer-by-customer basis as the simulation progresses..

Using the Simulator provides, for the trainer (and computer support staff), information about installing the simulation and the use of the software.

Running the Simulation provides, for the trainer, information about running the simulation.

Briefing is a MS Power Point briefing explaining the simulation to the participants. (You may find it useful if you review this before reading the briefs.)

	UK Versions	US Versions
Participants' Manual
Decision Form
Work Sheet
Record Sheet
Using the Simulator
Running the Simulation
Briefing

SIMULATOR DOWNLOAD

This is provided to allow you to download an evaluationversion of the simulation. 

Most recent update: 15/09/10
Hall Marketing, Studio 11, Colman's Wharf, 45 Morris Road, London E14 6PA, ENGLAND
Phone  +44 (0)20 7537 2982 E-mail jeremyhall@simulations.co.uk