Seven Ways to Drive Sales

Every company since the beginning of time has focused primarily on three things: developing products and services, increasing sales and decreasing costs. The goals are fatter margins and continued growth.

The one area that companies constantly tinker with is driving sales. The following is a breakdown of the seven main ways to run and drive sales, as well as the positive and negative aspects of each approach:

Captured sales force. These are sales people who only work for one company and sell only that company's products and services.

• Positive: These sales people give undivided attention to the company.
• Negative: There is significant cost to find, train, retain and support full-time sales people.

Distributors. These are companies that sell your product and/or service for either a split of the profits or will mark up the sales price of the product/service.

• Positive: The cost of sales drops dramatically because you don't have the cost of supporting a sales force. Distributors are like entrepreneurs so they are passionate about what they sell.
• Negative: You have no control over a distributor's day-to-day marketing or sales tactics.

Franchising. This is a sales process in which individuals operate under the same name of the company, follow the company's manual of operations, buy products and services from the founding company and pay a percentage of the sales back to the franchisor.

• Positive: Like distributors, the franchisees are entrepreneurial. You have control over the quality of the product and the marketing. Plus, there's no cost for infrastructure, equipment or real estate.
• Negative: You have no control over how the franchisee keeps the look and feel of the interior of the business. Also, you as the franchisor only get a small amount of the revenue .

Part-Time. These are people who are part of the company, but only work part-time and probably don't qualify for benefits.

• Positive: They are dedicated to your business and incur a much lower cost to support. You have the same control over part-time people as you do full-time employees.
• Negative: Although part-time people are dedicated to one company, because they are part-time they may not be able to give the effort needed to drive significant sales. They could also leave for a better deal.