Seven Ways to Drive Sales

11/09/07 - 11:49 AM EST

Marc Kramer

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 profit-margin 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 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.
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