Đồ án Improving the factors to enhance sales activities at the website www.khoadaotao.vn

job. For example, the director himself is a salesperson as well; the accountant herself is a salesperson and switchboard staff, too. In fact, every one in the company is salespeople and there is no real sales force for the website www.khoadaotao.vn. That one person must take many duties will result in overloading for them; therefore the working result is not as good as expected, especially sales activities are not invested and moderately cared. Moreover, the sales force is not methodically trained from the time they are recruited. All the knowledge and information about types of customers, competitors, strategies, or products must be methodically taught before the sales force enter the battle. However, all the information is just retransmitted from the old salespeople to the new ones. Therefore, the salespeople cannot get enough information and knowledge for their job. This influences badly on their strategic planning to compete with other websites, presenting and demonstrating to the customers, etc. On the other hand, the motivation for sales force is not strong enough to encourage them loving their work. Many salespeople came and went only because the salary and good-treatment policies of the company, which until now have not been improved yet, were not good. The sales force is considered as making money engines of the company, and squeezed their labour to fetch money to energize the website and the company. On their return, they just get dissatisfaction with the company’s policies. Process of selling of the website www.khoadaotao.vn The website www.khoadaotao.vn provides online broadcasting services to trainers, and they use online advertisement form, which includes both traditional advertisement and direct marketing to bring their service to their customers. The e-marketing strategies have been used rather effectively in their business via the performance and the facility of the website, which is easy for user to use. However, sales force does not know how to apply sensibly e-marketing to their work. Sometimes they abuse it while they do not take advantage of it in the process of selling at times. That affects a lot their sales activities. Chapter II – Theoretical framework used for the website www.khoadaotao.vn Sales force management In this report, the theory used and applied to the situation of the website www.khoadaotao.vn is section of Sales force management from The principle of Marketing textbook by Philip Kotler and Gary Amstrong. It includes the activities of training, compensating, supervising, and evaluating the sales force. . Training salespeople Many companies used to send their new salespeople into the field almost immediately after hiring them. They would be given samples, order books, and general instructions. Training programs were luxuries. To many companies, at raining program translated into much expense for instructors, materials, space, and salary for a person who was not yet selling, and a loss of sales opportunities because the person was not in the field. Today’s new salespeople, however, may spend anywhere form a few weeks or months to a year or more in training. The average training period is four months. Training programs have several goals. Salespeople need to know and identify with the company, so most training programs begin by describing the company’s history and objectives, its organization, its financial structure and facilities, and its chief products and markets. Sales people also need to know the company products, so sales trainees are shown how products are produced and how they work. They also need to know customers’ and competitors’ characteristics, so the training program teaches them about competitors’ strategies and about different types of customers and their needs, buying motives, and buying habits. Because sales people must know how to make effective presentations, they are trained in the principles of selling. They learn how to divide time between active and potential accounts and how to use an expense account, prepare reports, and route communications effectively. Compensating sales people To attract salespeople, a company must have an appealing compensation plan. These plans vary greatly both by industry and by companies within the same industry. The level of compensation must be close to the “going rate” for the type of sales job and needed skills. Compensation is made up of several elements – a mixed amount, a variable amount, expense, and fringe benefits. The fixed amount, usually a salary, gives the salesperson some stable income. The variable amount, which might be commissions or bonuses based on sales performance, rewards the salesperson for greater effort. Expense allowances, which repay salespeople for job-related expenses, let salespeople undertake needed and desirable selling efforts. Fringe benefits, such as paid vacations, sickness or accident benefits, pensions, and life insurance, provide job security and satisfaction. Management must decide what mix of these compensation elements makes the most sense for each sales job. Different combination of fixed and variable compensation give rise to four basic types of compensation plans – straight salary, straight commission, salary plus bonus, and salary plus commissions. A study of sales force compensation plans showed that about 14% of companies paid straight salary, 19% paid straight commission, 26% paid salary plus bonus, 37% paid salary plus commission, and 10% paid salary plus commission plus bonus. The compensation plan for sales force can be designed both to motive salespeople and to direct their activities. For example, if sales management wants salespeople to emphasize new account development, it might pay a bonus for opening new accounts. Thus, the compensation plan should direct the sales force toward activities that are consistent with overall marketing objectives. If the overall strategy is to grow rapidly and gain market share, the compensation plan should reward high sales performance and encourage salespeople to capture new accounts. This might suggest a larger commission component coupled with new account bonuses. By contrast, if the marketing goal is to maximize profitability of current accounts, the compensation plan might contain a larger base salary component, with additional incentives based on current account sales or customer satisfaction. Supervising sales people New salespeople need more than a territory, compensation, and training – they need supervision. Through supervision, the company directs and motivates the sales force to do a better job. Salespeople need to know how to use their time effectively. One tool is the annual call plan that shows which customers and prospects to call on in which months and which activities to carry out. Activities include taking part in trade shows, attending sales meetings, and carrying out marketing research. Another tool is time-and-duty analysis. In addition to time spent selling, the salesperson spends time travelling, waiting, eating, taking breaks, and doing administrative chores. On average, actual face-to-face selling time accounts for only 30% of total working time. If selling time could be raised from 30% to 40%, this would be a 33% increase in the time spent selling. Companies always are trying to find ways to save time – using phones instead of travelling, simplifying record-keeping form finding better call and routing plans, and supplying more and better customer information. Salespeople often work alone, and they must sometime travel away form home. They may face aggressive, competing salespeople and difficult customers. They sometimes lack the authority to do what is needed to win a sale and may thus lose large orders they have worked hard to obtain. Therefore, salespeople often need special encouragement to do their best. Management can boost sales force morale and performance through its organizational climate, sales quotas, and positive incentives. Organizational climate: Organization climate describes the feeling that salespeople have about their opportunities, value, and rewards for a good performance within the company. Treatment from the salesperson’s immediate superior is especially important. A good sales manager keeps in touch with the sales force through letters and phone calls, visits in the field, and evaluation sessions in the home office. At different times, the sales manager acts as the salesperson’s boss, companion, coach, and confessor. Sale quotas: Sales quotas are standards set for salespeople, starting the amount they should sell and how sales should be divided among the company’s products. Sales quotas are set at the time the annual marketing plan is developed. The company first decides on a sales forecast that is reasonable achievable. Based on this forecast, management plans production, work-force size, and financial needs. Generally, sales quotas are set higher than the sales forecast to encourage sales managers and salespeople to give their best effort. If they fail to make their quotas, the company may still make its sales forecast. Positive incentives: Sales meetings provide social occasions, break from with a larger from routines, chances to meet and talk with “company brass”, and opportunities to air feelings and to identify with a larger group. Companies also sponsor sales contests to spur the sales force to make a selling effort above what would normally be expected. Other incentives include honors, merchandise and cash awards, trips, and profit-sharing plans. Evaluating salespeople Using sales force reports and other information, sales management formally evaluates members of the sales force. Formal evaluation products four benefits. First, management must develop and communicate clear standards for judging performance. Second, management must gather well-rounded information about each salesperson. Third, salespeople receive constructive feedback that helps them to improve future performance. Finally, salespeople are motivated to perform well because they know they will have to sit down with the sales manager and explain their performance. Comparing salespeople’s performance: One type evaluation compares and ranks the sales performance of different salespeople. Such comparisons can be misleading, however. Salespeople may perform differently because of differences in territory potential workload, level of competition, company promotion effort, and other factors. Furthermore, sales are not usually the best indicator of achievement. Management should be more interested in how much each salesperson contributes to net profits, a concern that requires looking at each salesperson’s sales mix and expenses. Comparing current sales with past sales: Such a comparison should directly indicate the person’s progress. Qualitative evaluation of sales people: A qualitative evaluation usually looks at a salesperson’s knowledge of the company, products, customers, competitors, territory, and tasks. Personal traits – manner, appearance, speech, and temperament – can be rated. The sales manager also can review any problems in motivation or compliance. Each company must decide what would be most useful to know. It should communicate these criteria to salespeople so that they understand how their performance is evaluated and can make an effort to improve it. Steps in the selling process In addition to the theory of Sales force management, the report also uses the standard steps in the selling process in the Principles of Marketing textook written by Philip Kotler and Gary Amstrong. Prospecting and qualifying The first step in selling process is prospecting – identifying qualified potential customers. Although the company supplies some leads, salespeople need skill in finding their own. They can ask current customers for the names of prospects. They can build referral sources, such as suppliers, dealers, noncompeting salespeople, and bankers. They can join organizations to which prospects belong or can engage in speaking and writing activities that will draw attention. They can search for names in newspapers or directories and use the telephone and mail to track down leads. Or they can drop in unannounced on various offices. The salesperson often must approach many prospects to get just a few sales. Salespeople need to know how to qualify leads – that is, how to identify the good ones and screen out the poor ones. Prospects can be qualified by looking at their financial ability, volume of business, special needs, location, and possibilities for growth. Pre-approach Before calling on a prospect, the salesperson should learn as much as possible about the organization (what it needs, who is involved in the buying) and its buyers (their characteristics and buying styles). This step is known as the pre-approach. The salesperson can consult standard sources, acquaintances, and others to learn about the company. The salesperson should set call objectives, which may be to qualify the prospect, to gather information, or to make an immediate sale. Another task is to decide on the approach, which might be a personal visit, a phone call, or a letter. The best timing should be considered carefully because many prospects are busiest at certain times. Finally, the salesperson should give thought to an overall sales strategy for the account. Approach During the approach the step, the salesperson should know how to meet and greet the buyer and to get the relationship off to a good start. This step involves the salesperson’s appearance, opening lines, and the follow-up remarks. The opening lines should be positive and might be followed by some key questions to learn more about the customer’s needs or the showing of a display or sample to attract the buyer’s attention and curiosity. Presentation and Demonstration During the presentation step of the selling process, the salesperson tells the product “story” to the buyer, showing hoe the product will make or save money. The salesperson describes the product features but concentrates on presenting customer benefits. Using a need-satisfaction approach, the salesperson starts with a search for the customer’s needs by getting the customer to do most of the talking. This approach calls for good listening and problem-solving skills. Sales presentations can be improved with demonstration aids, such as booklets, flip charts, slides, videotapes or videodisc, and product samples. If buyers can see or handle the product, they will better remember its features and benefits. Handling objects Customers almost always have objections during the presentation or when asked to place an order. The problem can be either logical or psychological, and objections are often unspoken. In handling objections, the salesperson should use a positive approach, seek out hidden objections, ask the buyer to clarify any objections, take objections as opportunities to provide more information, and turn the objections into reasons for buying. Every salesperson needs training in the skills of handling objections. Closing After handling the prospect’s objections, the salesperson now tries to close the sale. Some salespeople do not get around to closing or do not handle it well. They may lack confidence, feel guilty about asking for the order, or fail to recognize the right moment to close the sale. Salespeople should know how to recognize the closing signals from the buyer, including physical actions, comments, and questions. For example, the customer might sit forward and nod approvingly or ask about prices and credit terms. Salespeople can use one of several closing techniques. They can ask for the order, review points of agreement, offer to help write up the order, ask whether the buyer wants this model or that one, or note that the buyer will lose out if the order is not placed now. The salesperson may offer the buyer special reasons to close, such as a lower price or an extra quantity at no exchange. Follow up The last step in selling process – follow up – is necessary if the salesperson wants to ensure customer satisfaction and repeat business. Right after closing, the salesperson should complete any detail on delivery time, purchase terms, and other matters. The salesperson should schedule a follow-up call when the initial order is received to make sure there are proper installation, instruction, and servicing. This visit would reveal any problem, assure the buyer of the salesperson’s interest, and reduce any buyer concerns that might have arisen since the sale. Selling online advertising The website www.khoadaotao.vn provides the services of online advertising to the customers – trainers. Therefore, it is impossible to ignore the theory of selling online advertising. This theory is extracted from the textbook of E-commerce published by National Economics University Publisher. According to this book, selling online advertising is a kind of special online service business, including particular content and requires. Online advertising business is not a mere click, but requires much of patience, hardness, sensitiveness with the variation of the Internet. It requires the advertisers to offer attractive advertisements, which satisfy needs and hobbies of customers, make relationships in long run with advertisers, keep flexibilities in pricing, and make creation. Buying goods in the market is not easy, and buying online advertising is much more difficult. Therefore, businesses should do these following contents as good as possible: Pointing out and classifying what they buy The first step in setting up an advertising program is to point out and classifying what can be sold. When we sell advertisements on the Internet, advertising program is our products, which need classifying and inventorying. It is essential to consider the ability of accepting advertising samples, placing the advertisements in order to define technical details of the site, including: advertising samples, arranging positions for advertising, types of advertising, types of static, dynamic or multimedia advertisements, the selective purposes, particular benefits such as monopoly compromise, and other opportunities. Preparing the essential base for their website When the business accepts advertising, they need to prepare the essential base for their website in order to make sure that all the applications can satisfy needs of customers. That is to supervise and measure the activities of their site, advertising models and manage the advertising. Researching and having deep knowledge of needs – interests of customers The value of the site is the number of visitors. It means that if the site makes the high level of activity, it is one of precious assets. The increase of level of activity of the site proves that the site succeeds in satisfying need and interest of visitors and making sure that advertising buyers can continue to spread their advertising on the website of the businesses. When the advertiser buys advertising, they should clearly know which objectives they approach when they carry out advertising on the website. Thus, the business must have ability of providing database profiles of their visitors. The more detailed visitors’ database profiles are, the more valuable the advertising on the site is. Pricing, discounting and special favouring The next step is to define advertising price, discount and special favour in specific cases in order to increase turnover and benefits. Building introductory advertising programs The business should have an advertising program to introduce advertising opportunities when they buy an advertisement. The introductive program of online advertising should include these following key factors: The overview and features of the Site The contact detail The advertising program and funding The advertising price The level of Site’s activity The population features of visitors These factors can be presented separately or associatively in the single web. Selling advertising Selling advertising is the most exciting but most difficult process. In addition to preparing for the Site, the business needs to find the suitable objectives to sell advertisements. These people may be sales force in the company, a representative, an advertising system, an online auction service, or all. Building sales force Selling is an art and nothing can replace the innate talent. However, the sales force will become strong if they are trained well and suitably. Studying selling art and science is a continual process to selling job seekers and experienced salespeople. Chapter III – The weakness of factors affecting sales activities at the website www.khoadaotao.vn Sales force and sales force management system 1.1. The quality of sales force According to the observation and interview results, all the salespeople in AMICA Corp including the people who came and went have rather high qualifications. They all graduated from universities such as Hanoi University, Foreign Trade University, National Economics University… However, they do not have enough skills to become a salesperson or their majors are very different from the features of the job in AMCIA Corp, especially at www.khoadaotao.vn; whereas the pressure and requirements of the job do not allow salespeople to spend much time making acquainted with the job. Moreover, they are quite passive when they perform and put the sales plans into execution. They are not aware of the importance of the sales to the website and the company; even have no ideas to improve the bad results from the former salespeople. That is the biggest problem in sales force, which contributes to the weakness of the sales activities in the company. 1.2. The managing methods . Training salespeople According to the Principle of Marketing, the period training period for sales force is four months. However, in AMICA Corp and many other companies in Vietnam as well, the time for training is not long enough for the salespeople to get the information about things they need to serve their work. In fact, AMICA Corp has no really basic training course for their sales force, but just small talks with guidelines attached to the times the director entrusts his men with the sales plans and duties, which causes misunderstanding and ambiguity for the sales to carry out the plans. It is obvious that sales force does not have comprehensive understanding about the strategies of the company and its competitors, customers’ needs and buying habits for one time. The general knowledge is chopped up in many times, which makes salespeople confused and do not know how to solve when they encounter the problems they have never been told and trained before. So far, there have been many business opportunities ignored only because the sales force do not have timely reactions due to shortage of necessary knowledge for each case. The management should solve this problem in training, the very early period of sales activities, to make the solid base for the sales force. . Compensating salespeople AMICA Corp is a new small business, so the financial ability does not allow paying high salary to the employees. The basic salary, which the sales force gets from the company is too low to ensure their monthly expenditure. The salary of an employee who has worked for AMICA Corp for more than two years is only about two million VND, which is approximate the budget of a student for the most basic expenditure each month; whereas, the expenditure of an office staff is always much higher than that of a normal student. Comparing the rate of the budget and expenditure between an office staff and a normal in this situation, it is obvious that the salary of AMICA’s employees is not enough for the essential daily needs. That effects a lot on their spirit and enthusiasm in working. Moreover, according to the policy of the company, each salesperson will get commission of 5% for each contract he or she brings to the company. Yet, in fact, there is no commission for the sales force. As a story of one employee, one salesperson traded with a customer and everything would have been good if the contract of eighty million VND had been signed. Making a quick calculation, the commission for this salesperson would have been four million VND. However, the director was willing to give up the contract of eighty million VND only because he did not want to pay such high commission to her. This real story shows the bad encouragement from the management to the whole sales force. Salary is the most significant factor that motivates the worker’s performance. However, AMICA’s management does not complete this motivation, which depresses the spirit of sales force. Many of them left the company because of the fact that is so different from the compensating policy they know. That is why nowadays the number of the employees and sales force looks scattered. If the manager does not adjust the policy and follow it seriously, the company will not be able to survive because there are no salespeople and no employee except for the director in the company. . Supervising salespeople In general, the sales force knows how to use their time effectively after a short time they work. They use rather effectively the time-and-duty-analysis by using phones and emails instead of travelling, simplifying record-keeping forms to supply more and better information to the customers. This helps a lot in enhancing the sales activities of the company. However, the motivation from the company do not have enough strength to encourage them do their best. Following the theory of Principles of Marketing, three sub-factors will be analyzed to see the shortcoming of the company in motivating salespeople, which are organization climate, sales quotas, and positive incentives. Organization climate AMICA Corp is a business with small number of employees while the workload is quite large, so the employees and the sales force have many opportunities to perform and show their ability within the company. However, they do not take advantage of those opportunities; even they are very indifferent to them. One salesperson who was asked about the reason why she did not try her best when her ability allowed her to do it answered the only reason was that she did not receive any good treatment from the management although she ever tried her best to make money for the company. This kind of behaviour reflects the fact of treatment from the supervisor that does not satisfy the expectation of the employees. An ideal manager is the person who can act as many characters at different times such as salesperson’s boss, companion, coach, and confessor as mentioned in Principles of Marketing textbook. The manager in AMICA Corp acts purely as a boss, who only knows the result of the work without caring spiritual life of the whole company. The sales force does not get any encouragement from the management and it results in shortage of motivation and passion to do their work. This disadvantageous factor indirectly effects on the sales activities through the motivation of the sales force from the management. Sales quotas The management of all the companies also set the higher sales quotas than sales forecast to encourage their sales force to give their best effort. AMICA Corp is not an exception. In the plan for each week, the quotas are often set at the high level such as two most significant quotas: - The number of trainers approached at the first time: 100 – 150 - The number of trainers signing the contract of using services: 5 – 7 It is obvious that one salesperson can not follow up these quotas fluently from week to week since the limitation of trainers in the market does not allow salespeople exploit forever and contracts cannot be signed in one or two days, but a process. The manager clearly understands this difficulty, but such high quotas are still set to encourage the sales force to follow up. Yet, at times, it brings unexpected results from the salespeople. When they try their best to complete the quotas but the result is always lower than what they must reach, then they feel exhausted, weary and stressful, which brings badness to their spirit and performance in sales activities. Positive incentives The company sometimes makes parties for the whole company to sit together, chatting about things different the work on several occasions. When one employee get sick, he or she will gets the allowance of two hundred thousand VND from the management. Although the money value is not considering, the sales force feel encouraged and consoled, which partly offsets their effort. However, it is not really enough for the expectation of the sales force of the company. The management had better give more incentives to the salespeople if he wants sales activities to develop further. The shortcomings in the process of selling In theory, the general selling process includes seven steps as following: Step 1 – Prospecting and Qualifying Step 2 – Pre-approach Step 3 – Approach Step 4 – Presentation and Demonstration Step 5 – Handling Objections Step 6 - Closing Step 7 – Follow up This process is also applied to the sales activities at the website www.khoadaotao.vn. The report will analyze each step in the situation of the website www.khoadaotao.vn and find out the shortcomings in several steps, which affect the whole process. 2.1. Step 1 – Prospecting and Qualifying The website www.khoadaotao.vn is the website that provides services of online advertising to the trainers who want to advertise their training courses and to attract the learners. The task of the sales force is to sell as many services as possible and the potential customers are defined to be these trainers mentioned above. However, a customer is summarily qualified through their location and special needs when its name is found somewhere on the magazines, newspapers, which is not enough to qualify a potential customer. All the names of trainers are considers as potential customers of the website and the greeting emails in the next steps will be sent to all kinds of trainers without filtering. The advantage of this is that the sales person can cover all the customers without missing out any, which means the opportunities to sell are higher. However, when the salesperson does not find the information to qualify the customers, it results in wrong strategies later, which may wreck all the process. 2.2. Step 2 – Pre-approach After defining the qualified potential customers, the salesperson continues to look for the information of the customers he or she tends to approach by access the website of customers or the information of customer on the website of AMICA’s competitors. For example, the competitors of the website www.khoadaotao.vn are www.hieuhoc.vn, www.lichkhaigiang.vn, or www.hocgi-odau.vn… Like www.khoadaotao.vn, these webs have the services of introduction of trainers. These services allow the trainers to registry and upload the information about the trainer to broadcast the brand. The sales force of www.khoadaotao.vn can find the necessary information about the trainers in the list on these competitors. For the customers who are not in the list of the competitors, the information can be found in its website and other websites, which write about it. However, the sales force just stops at finding characteristics and styles of customers via Internet. There are many other ways to decide the best approach such as a personal visit, a phone call, or a letter, which are not carried out by the sales force. They do not have enough time to write a letter or make a personal visit. The main reason for this passiveness is the overload of work for all the salespeople, who must be responsible for many fields simultaneously. 2.3. Step 3 – Approach The most common approach method used in business of AMICA Corp is via email and phone calls at times. Emails are taken thoroughly advantages to approach the customers. However, the form of the greeting email is not flexible. One form of greeting if used from time to time, from customer to customer without changing to fit types and business styles of each customer. For example, the website has two main types of customers, who are skill training trainers and vocational training trainers. In the first one, there are many sub-types such as soft skill training trainers, English trainers, professional selling skill trainers, etc, and so does the second one. One form of greeting email is used to send to all kinds of customers – trainers. Each type of customer has his or her own characters and needs and they should be classified and grouped together. However, the salesperson forgets this detail , which leads to the fact that different trainers in differently fields are put on the same par. If they get the greeting email from the AMCIA’s salesperson, they may feel that they are not paid attention, which results in their ignorance. On the other hands, the sales force knows the effectiveness of phones in approaching but they do not apply this way to their sales activities. They just use phones as a tool to confirm whether the greeting email has been delivered to the customer or not, which wastes a potential ability to take opportunities of business. 2.4. Step 4 – Presentation and Demonstration The situation of human resources for the website www.khoadaotao.vn is not stable, the number of sales force who come and go always changes. Thus, the time one salesperson working for the website is not long enough for them to have deep understanding about the services. Then, one problem is raised when the customers wonder about one of the services they want to use, the sales force cannot help them timely or properly. This drops customers’ belief in the services of the website. According to the observation in three months at AMICA Corp with sales activity at www.khoadaotao.vn, the result shows that the customers called many times to ask about the services but the sales force could not satisfy them, which made them confused and annoyed. However, demonstration aids are rather adequate such as slides, flip charts or booklets, which are prepared for enhancing selling. Yet, the salespeople do not often use these aids to show the information and achievement of the company and the website as well. The customers cannot see what the website does, what the website has achieved. It is certain that their belief is not reinforced. If the aids are combined with good presentation, sales activities will be considerably improved. 2.5. Step 5 – Handling Objections In the process of selling, the salespeople often handle the objections from the customers such as the service prices between www.khoadaotao.vn and other competitors, the promotion and discount for long run, or the difficulty in payment method, etc. These objections are usually handled quickly to help the customers as good as possible. In addition, the information around the things the customers are wondering is provided to them so that they have the exact understanding about the service. 2.6. Step 6 – Closing The step of handling the objections is well done and this often makes the customers pleased. However, when the opportunities to close sales come, the salespeople do not know take it to close it by a contract. They do not recognize the closing signals from the trainers, so the trainers are not cared to come to a contract. Let us see the real story in March 2010 to see the weakness of the sales force in this step. In the early March, The school of training high-ranking personnel Pioneer asked for a price list of the online advertising service at the website www.khoadaotao.vn. They wondered about the policy and the discount when they used the long-term service in one year. All the information came to Pioneer easily from the salesperson of AMICA, which made the customer pleased. Then, Pioneer gives other positive signals to the sales person of AMCIA such as asking about payment method, terms in the contract, the validity of the contract. Yet, the salesperson did not have any more action to care the customer, such as sending email, making phone calls, convincing and pinching the customers in order to close the sale because she did not realize those good signals from Pioneer. At that time, the contract of thirty million VND was gone in front of their eyes. That is the memorable lesson for her and for the whole sales force in the company. 2.7. Step 7 – Follow-up After closing the sale, the salesperson carries out the responsibility to care the customers before carrying out the terms in the contract such as reconfirming the purchase terms on phone or email, sending email of thanks, taking the opinions about the services. When the customer raises any question about the service, the salesperson will make the adjustment to balance the expectation of the customer and the right of the website. However, the customers often use the services of the website one time and do not keep their use in the second time. The sales force often fails to convince the customers to repeat the businesses because the after sales service does not please the customers. After the contract is signed and the services are triggered on the website, the customer is often forgotten without receiving any caring email or call from the salesperson or customer caring staff. The after sale service is very important to the selling process. If the salesperson does not follow this step well, the business will collapse soon. The ability to apply e-marketing method in selling online advertising Nowadays, Internet is more and more developing, it is becoming the essential part of life and business, and much profit is gained from the Internet. AMICA Corp also earns money by doing business through the website www.khoadaotao.vn. They sell services of online advertising to the trainers who have needs of broadcasting their brand and advertising their training course. Therefore, it is not impossible to apply Internet marketing strategies to their business. However, Internet marketing has not taken advantage effectively, which affects the business. In the past time, not many people who visited the website www.khoadaotao.vn found it was unattractive and wordy appearance of the website, the search engine was old and did not satisfy the searching needs of the visitors. After improving by applying Internet marketing method by changing the appearance of the web, renewing applications to facilitate visitor to find out the information they need, the number of visitors considerably increase. The trainers saw the potential opportunities to broadcast their brand when they look at the development of the website and the successful number of visitor is increasing. This attracts trainers to purchase the online advertising services on the website. The most significant change in the website that makes it different from the other websites is the Electronic Library, in which many documents in many fields from different sources are uploaded. The visitors can register, sign in to download them in order to get the book they need. In addition, the visitors also get the experience in study and career in the section of Experience Sharing. Especially, the searching engine classifies the list of trainers, the list of training courses in categories, which is convenient for the learners who seek for the information of the training courses and the educators. The website seems to be excellent and successful if we are in the position of visitors. However, if we observe and study the internal running, it is not as good as its appearance. In the kind of business, Information Technology (IT) person plays an important role in security and fluency of the website’s operation while there are many potential acts of sabotage from the competitors. However, so far, there have been times the website is blocked by hackers due to the subjective feeling of IT person. Each time of being blocked, it takes much of time to recover the website from paralyzing. Moreover, the quality of Internet connection speed is not good and fast enough because it has not been focused to invest and improve. These technical problems play a major part to the discontinuation of the website running, which wastes much money of the company. In addition, the service prices of the website are not competitive. The fee for advertising is always higher and non-negotiable in comparison with the price list of the other websites. This price list has been applied since the first January 2009 without changing up to now. The company has come up with many strategies to attract using from the customers but there has been no strategy related to fee and discount for advertising. The company and the customers often negotiate the price and the result is that the customers leave in failure position and no contract is signed. In conclusion, sales activities of the website www.khoadaotao.vn and AMICA Corp encounter many problems of human resources management such as training, compensating, supervising and evaluating the sales people. In addition, the process of selling has not been complete yet with many drawbacks in each step. Another problem is the applying the Internet marketing to the business, which have not developed as strongly as expected. The company should solve these problems as soon as possible to make sure the fluency and effect of sales activities at the website www.khoadaotao.vn and the whole company. Chapter IV – Recommendations to improve shortcomings to enhance sales activities at the website www.khoadaotao.vn Modifying sales management methods to encourage the sales force 1.1. Training sales force AMICA Corp should build a standard training program for the sales force. They should have a full and deep knowledge of the online advertising services at the website www.khoadaotao.vn because they are not able to provide the information about the services when they do not understand them. The customers of the website www.khoadaotao.vn are trainers, who have different characteristics from other types of businesses in buying motives and buy habits. The sales should be taught these differences to avoid any mistake in approaching and co-operating. Moreover, the sales force needs to know the characteristics of competitors such as the websites www.lichkhaigiang.vn, www.hieuhoc.vn, www.timkhoahoc.com, etc to find out the most suitable strategies. Not all the salespeople who know the time schedule when they enter the company. Therefore, it is necessary to teach the whole sales force how to divide time logically to fit the features of the job. Especially, the most important thing the sales force should be taught is the responsibility, working attitude, and conscience in working because when they do not have these above, the other efforts become meaningless. 1.2. Compensating sales force As the salary is the most important motive influencing the performance of the employees, the company should modify the salary regulation for the staff. The company must pay the employees the salary that insures their quality of life, at least monthly expenditure. The management can apply the regulation of raising salary each six months basing on the result of performance to encourage them. Another problem is the commitment of the management about paying commission to the sales force. When the policy of commission is leased, it must be followed seriously and the management is not the exception. It means that the salespeople must have the right to get the real commission 5% of the contract’s value. In addition, the company should plus extra bonus to the straight salary and straight commission as a prize for the bright sales people. At times, it is the best motive to encourage the performance of the sales force. 1.3. Evaluating sales force Frequently, the management compares the performance between salespeople to evaluate the ability of each salesperson. However, AMICA Corp has no real sales force to do this. A recommendation for this case is that the management should compare the current performance and the past performance. The manager can compare the result of net sales, gross profit, sales expense, number of new customers, and number of lost customers… of the current time and the past time to adjust the productivity of the current sales force. The sales force needs to know their productivity to improve it and develop as well. After showing the result of working and the effectiveness of sales force’s performance, the manager should help to find the solution to improve the drawbacks and enhance sales activities. 2. Building and completing the process of selling In general, the sales force follows the steps of selling process rather properly. However, when going into detail, many problems reveals in each step. In order to succeed in building a standard process of selling, they should pay more attention in detail to correct the false they are encountering. They are: - Defining and qualifying the potential customers: Not all the trainers are the potential customers of the website www.khoadaotao.vn,; therefore, the salespeople should be define the customers by seeking the information related to the them to have the understanding about the customer they tend to approach. - Finding out as many approaching ways as possible: The trainers are in everywhere, so the salespeople cannot know all of them if they just sit in front of the computer connecting to the Internet. They should combine the major method – emails – sensitively with other methods such as phone call, personal visits, chatting, make an appointment, etc. It will be much more effective than exchanging via email only. - Well preparing all the documents before providing information to the customers and taking advantage of demonstration aids of the company: This require the sales force to be clear about the feature of the online advertising services at the website. They should estimate the spring situations in advance to be active with the consideration of the customers. Besides, the demonstration aids are available for approaching customers, so the salespeople should utilize what they have to push their sales activities. The company can also collect all the videos and pictures, making CDs to send the customers. They can more understand without much of explanation from the salespeople. - Being sensitive in realizing the closing signals from the customers: This is the important in the process. When the salespeople get the positive signals from the trainers, they should care the customers and persuade them come to the contracts before they rethink and refuse to use the services. However, that the contract is signed is not a complete success because at this time, the money is not really in the hand of the company. - Improving the after sales service to attract the business repetition of the customers: The salespeople should send letter of thanks, make visits or phone calls to affirm the existence and caring of the company. Finding potential customers in the list of familiar trainers is much easier than the completely ones. Therefore, the salespeople should know how to utilize these familiar customers and convince them to repeat business. These recommendations above are just ideas for building the standard process of selling applied to the situation of AMICA Corp and the website www.khoadaotao.vn. However, selling is an art and the salesperson is an artist. The artist should find out his or her own way beside the official form to master his or her business. 3. Applying effectively Internet marketing strategies to online advertising E-marketing is considered as the foundation for online advertising business. Basically, the website www.khoadaotao.vn has a good foundation for their business. They need to improve their drawback in using the techniques to build and develop the website by updating new applying technologies such as search engines, smart tools and put them into execution, which facilitates the customers to use. The website www.khoadaotao.vn sells online advertising services on itself and it needs broadcasting the brand Khoadaotao as well. In turn, the website finds out the way to spread its name. The website can use social networks as cheap but effective tools to coradcast the name. They are www.facebook.com, www.360plus.yahoo.com, www.picasa.google.com, etc. One of the important factors affecting the business decision of the customer is the price and discount policy. The website should be more flexible in negotiating the price with the customers. They should lose some of money rather than lose one customer because when a customer is lost, many other customers are lost as well. The company had better offer the discount programs on special occasions to call attention of customers. APPENDIX Interview questions: How do the new salespeople get the information about the company? How much money is your salary? Is it enough for you to pay the daily expenditure? Do you have any comment on the commission policy of the company? Take the example or the real story to prove what you say. Can you tell me some lessons of selling you have learnt at AMICA Corp? Some charts and pictures used in the report: The table of service price list at the website www.khaodaotao.vn REFERENCES Dortor Tran Van Hoe, “E-marketing”, The Textbook of Basic E-Commerce, National Economics Unviversity Publisher Philip Kotler (Northwestern University) and Gary Amstrong (University of NorthCarolina), “Promoting Products Personal Selling and Sales Management”, Principles of Marketing (7th edition), Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey AMICA Corp, Positions for Banner [] AMICA Corp, Service price list []