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Improving the sales force performance at King Toys

Tsalidis, Louloudis (2010) Improving the sales force performance at King Toys.

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Abstract:King Toys Co (KT) is a middle size private owned enterprise that was established in 1989 with the acquiring of facilities in Athens. The company is merchandising over 3000 different products in toys area per year and it is ranked as relative one of the ‘Middle-size Wholesalers in Greece’. More specifically, King’s toys main domain is to import and merchandise selected toys from factories mainly in China (also it imports products from Italy, Turkey and Germany). The sales team comes then and it promotes all of the products to costumers mainly in Greece in wholesalers and final retailers. The purpose of this report is to examine the potential improvements that King Toys should implement in order to achieve higher results in its sales force performance, as well as to explore how these improvements should be implemented. For that reason the author firstly conducted a research in the academic literature of sales force improvement and secondly carried out an analysis of the present state of the company, including internal and external environmental analysis. In the academic literature of sales fore improvement, some very interesting points are highlighted such as: a) the importance of training and consultancy, b) the importance of collaboration between sales and marketing departments, 3 Improving sales performance c) the value of an effective reward system, d) companies should focus on long term relationships as well as e) on profitability and not in volume. After the analysis of the external and internal environment of the company, it was found that King toys is a middle size company, which illustrated a sales growth rate of 37 % between 2001 and 2007 (in 2008 sales declined). A great advantage for the firm is the good working climate and the excellent working relations between the personnel. On the other hand, it was indicated that King toys strategy focuses mainly on volume and not on profits. In addition the staff of the company is characterized by weak educational background, as well as lack of training. Moreover, the firm has not an established marketing department. Finally, external analysis identified two interesting points: 1) GDP growth, consumption and birth rate in Greece are declining; b) customers have shifted away from traditional toys to electronic games and computers. In relevance to what was found in the analysis of the environment of the firm, five points for improvement were suggested. In more details, suggestions for improvement include: 1) Establishment of a marketing department, 2) Focus in new product categories such as electrical and high tech games, 3) Improvement in the recruitment system, 4) Launch of Seminars and training sessions, and 5) Focus on profit and long term relationships with customers. Those are key point that could drive KT to sales growth.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/60079
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