B31C2 Increase Your Company’s Sales Revenue Profitably

PGEMP B31C2 Study Plan : Marketing Management : Prof S K Palekar

Increase Your Company’s Sales Revenue Profitably

During this contact

The theme that would be covered in Marketing Management during Contact 2 is “Increase your company’s sales revenue profitably” and all 6 sessions will be woven around this important theme. You will find session wise lists of Readings, Classroom Sessions, Group Work Sessions, Practice Exercises, Conceptual Exercises and Application Exercises here.

 Everyone wants more sales. Increasing the revenue is indeed an important measure of the  performance of the marketing function in any business. However, chasing sales for the sake of sales often leads you to predictable tactical path that many of us are familiar with - reducing prices, promoting heavily and increasing the sales activity. These tactics may increase the sales in the short run but they also increase the costs and reduce the profitability. Sometimes they even may cause irreversible problems. In this course we will discuss how to improve your sales revenue strategically – which not only improves the revenue  but also improves its quality and your bottom line. We will take examples from B2C and B2B industries – both products and services. 

Are you prepared for this contact? 

1.     You had almost 80 days off-campus after the previous contact and we presume you have utilized this time to prepare yourself for the class by

·         Complete reading of the relevant chapters in the textbook from the last contact and the academic handbook given to you during the last contact

·         Completed solving of the conceptual and application assignments given to you during the last contact and submitted them in time on the e learning platform

·         Completed reading of the pre-reading material for the forthcoming class  

2.     If so, you will be ready

·         for the quizzes / surprise tests in the class

·         to participate in the class by asking questions

·         read “additional readings” after the class

·         tackling application exercises where concepts learned are applied to your company/ division

·         to submit the application exercises on schedule

Aim of the Course  

The plan you are holding in your hand has been designed keeping in mind that the course aims to produce a General Manager out of you - and not a functional marketing specialist. You may probably never sit in a marketing chair and asked to perform marketing tasks  directly - selling, advertising, promoting, market research and customer satisfaction. Nonetheless, you will always work with the marketing function for cross-functional common business objectives like new product development, customer support and service, production planning, supply chain, pricing and you must know enough about how marketing function operates. We also hope to help you develop your independent opinion on the marketing issues so that you can assess the situation properly and suggest relevant and well diagnosed approaches for dealing with your customers and competitors in order to increase your sales and profits.

Course Duration and Architecture 

By virtue of having an experience of at least 5 years in the industry, we know that you may have been exposed to how marketing functions in your company. However we will assume that you may not have had any formal education and training in marketing so far. Hence you will cover marketing in four consecutive contacts: C1, C2, C3 and C4. In each contact you will typically have 6 class sessions and 1 or 2 Group Work Sessions. Each session will be of 70 minutes each.

Course Evaluation  

·         60 % depends on your examination performance

·         40%  depends on your performance in the assignments

Reading and Review Material

·         Edits of the PPTs shown in the class will be shared.

·         Cases and other material hard copies will be given in the class

·         Text: Marketing Management-A South Asian perspective by Kotler,Keller , Koshy, Jha

·         This academic handbook and its contents

Summary of what we covered in Contact 1

• Customer is probably the most important stakeholder in today’s business because without support from the customer (who has a wide choice today) your business would surely fail.
• Studying the market and customers and then choosing the customers carefully is a very important step in marketing. Once the customers are chosen, all important marketing processes, organisational parts and supply chain can be arranged to focus on the chosen customer according to the customer expectations and behaviours. This is called customer centricity or customer focus.

·         The five basic Marketing processes are

o    MARKET SENSING : tracks , analyzes and interprets reality in terms of environment /  competition / customer – and provides foundation for all actions. 

o    STRATEGY FORMULATION :  deciding what value to create, for whom, and how.

o    CUSTOMER FULFILLMENT :  coordinating internally to get the strategy implemented, products developed,  stock produced and distributed etc

o    GO TO MARKET : locating, prospecting, contacting, promoting, advising, closing, transacting - and thus acquiring customers - in order to generate revenues. 

o    LEARNING FROM CUSTOMER SATISFACTION :  measuring satisfaction,  managing complaints, customer recovery, learning from mistakes.

·        We also learnt that evocative words like “good” / “bad “ have practical meaning only in the context of our definition of who our customers and users are.The Everwrite case  demonstrated how marketing decisions will change depending upon the Market we are catering to.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES OF B31C2

• Understand MVG model to know what drives the sales revenue
• Understand 3 important concepts “market”, “value proposition”, “go to market”
• Aligning these to maximize revenue
• How to practically select markets, value propositions and Go-To-Market routes
• How MVG model is applied across  different industries
• How to identify target markets
• How to develop value propositions under different situations
• Using customer behaviour for market analysis & Value Proposition development
• To be able to understand the significance of a marketing plan
• To understand the Planning process and the essential components of a marketing Plan
• Appreciate differences between a Marketing Vs a Sales/ Communication/Advertising plan
• Application of marketing plan to various businesses.

Frameworks Used

• M-V-G Model
• The Business unit strategic planning Process/Fig. 2.7/Pg 50/Kotler
• SWOT Analysis/Pg 50/ Kotler
• Situation Analysis- the 4 C framework/Sample marketing Plan/Pg 57/ Kotler

Readings from the text book

• Identifying Market Segments and Targets / Chapter 8/ Kotler
• Analysing Consumer Markets / Chapter 6/ Kotler
• Analysing Business Markets/ Chapter 7/ Kotler
• Crafting the Brand positioning/ Chapter 11/ Kotler
• Developing Marketing Strategies and plans/ Chapter 2/Pg 34/Kotler
• Gathering information and scanning the environment/ Chapter 3/Kotler

Readings from the handout folder

• 3 B2B Value proposition rules that create preference not parity
• How to create strong value propositions that lead to sales
• Getting your value proposition across
• Unless you have unlimited budgets, your target market is not everyone. Who has the money?
• Benefits of a formal marketing plan
• Top Marketing Plan mistakes, compiled from the web
• Note on Industrial Strategy

SEQUENCE OF SESSIONS DURING THIS CONTACT

Group Work Session Raam Baan case

This is a group exercise. Each group will read and discuss the case “3-IN-ONE Raam Baan by VOP” and make a presentation in Session 1. Each group will need to submit a PPT, max 5 slides .First slide should have names and roll numbers of members. Presentation time given 8 minutes (2 per slide) and 7 minutes of Q/A. Total 15 minutes. The faculty will ask any one person from any of the groups to present. The presentations should be loaded on the class computer before the session. Questions for the group work :  How much do you think the company will  sell? This case submission will carry 10 marks.

Sessions 1

Presentation by the students of  the group work.

Session 2

Pedagogy : Case Discussions

Learning Objective : To arrive at the MVG model using the B2B VOP case.

Summary : “Victory over Pests” is a company grappling with making a sales forecast for a new technologically superior product they have invented. Through this case you will learn the strategic factors that drive the sales revenue and learn the model S = f ( C, V, G ) where S,C,V and G stand for Sales, Choice of Customers, Value proposition and Go-to-market respectively. 

Sessions 3-4

Pedagogy : Application Discussions

Learning Objective : To understand how to apply CVG model to various situations for arriving at sales forecast and also to find out ways of increasing your sales.

Summary: Apply 4 situations : B2C Products / Services and to B2B Products / Services

Group Work Session Xycurity Solutions  

This is a group exercise. Each group will read and discuss this case and make a presentation in Session 5. Each group will need to submit a PPT, max 5 slides .First slide should have names and roll numbers of members. Presentation time given 8 minutes (2 per slide) and 7 minutes of Q/A. Total 15 minutes. The faculty will ask any one person from any of the groups to present. The presentations should be loaded on the class computer before the session. Questions for the group work : Which target market you prefer and why. Which segment of B2B market ( or B2C market ) will you target ? why? For this chosen market, define your planned Value Proposition and your Go-To-Market plan

Sessions 5

Presentation by the students of the group work on Xycurity / Other case

Session 6

Pedagogy : Conceptual Discussions

Learning Objective : How to make a marketing plan

Summary : “Failing to plan is planning to fail” : we will learn how to create a marketing plan and what are the usual mistakes one must avoid. We will learn that many plans that are masquerading out there as marketing plans are not marketing plans at all. The template of a marketing plan will be given.

AFTER THE CONTACT

Application Assignment 1(20 Marks)

Identify a market segment that your company is catering to. What are the key requirements/ expectations of this segment? What is your value proposition to this segment? What go to market activities do you perform to meet the expectations of this segment? Are all the three aligned to each other? Are there any expectations which are currently not being met by your organisation? What improvements will you thus suggest in the areas of

·         Value proposition

·         Go to Market activities to meet these expectations?

Application Assignments 2 (Marks 10+10)

Refer to the article “Top marketing plan mistakes” in your handout folder. It has a list, compiled from various sources, of the common marketing plan pitfalls .As part of your off campus assignment, you are required to study the article and examine which of the above mentioned mistakes are committed in your organisation. What improvements do you suggest in your Marketing plan and the Planning process to avoid these pitfalls?