Sales management is of paramount importance in the implementation of a firm’s strategies, significantly affecting its survival, growth, and creation of shareholder value. Nowadays sales managers are assuming multifaceted roles in planning, organising, managing, directing, and controlling their salesforce, who work intricably between the firm and its customers, talk directly with them and thus adapt their selling, with the objective to deliver superior customer value and therefore achieve sustained firm performance. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the complexities and difficulties with respect to conducting and managing the selling efforts leading to firm effectiveness.

This course provides students with an overall understanding of the crucial roles of sales management in a firm in achieving its strategic goals, and the relevant theories as well as the practices in managing a salesforce effectively and ethically. Notably, contemporary sales management is now influenced by an array of forces (such as the emergence of technological sales enablement, the trend for selling globally and electronically), and such forces need to be recognised with the objective of harnessing profitable customer relationships and thus achieving sustainable competitive advantage. The common issues of sales management include planning, organising, managing, directing, and controlling the sales function need to be more thoroughly understood within a strategic framework in the face of various environmental forces, in order to be aligned with a firm’s strategic goals resulting in long run firm success.