NAXFRA MIXED EDUCATION ENRICHMENT (N.M.E.E).

SALES MANAGEMENT In today's global marketplace, managers face many challenges related to fulfilling the customer's ever-changing needs and expectations. The concept of customer service has recently become more complex as a result of globalization of goods and services. Customers are now well-informed decision makers as a result of the abundance of information that is available online and in the media. In addition, today's consumer is most concerned with how a salesperson can solve basic problems and ultimately add value to a product or service. The role of sales intermediaries is now, more than ever, important to success in this new competitive global marketplace. As a result, sales managers have a new challenge of responding to this new environment with innovative techniques for managing and motivating the sales force. The following sections define general sales management terms, examine the role of a sales manager, and focus on methods used to mange, lead and motivate e

PRODUCTION PLANNING AND SCHEDULING Production planning is the function of establishing an overall level of output, called the production plan. The process also includes any other activities needed to satisfy current planned levels of sales, while meeting the firm's general objectives regarding profit, productivity, lead times, and customer satisfaction, as expressed in the overall business plan. The managerial objective of production planning is to develop an integrated game plan where the operations portion is the production plan. This production plan, then, should link the firm's strategic goals to operations (the production function) as well as coordinating operations with sales objectives, resource availability, and financial budgets. The production-planning process requires the comparison of sales requirements and production capabilities and the inclusion of budgets, pro forma financial statements, and supporting plans for materials and workforce requirements, as well

PRODUCT-PROCESS MATRIX The product-process matrix is a tool for analyzing the relationship between the product life cycle and the technological life cycle. It was introduced by Robert H. Hayes and Steven C. Wheelwright in two classic management articles published in Harvard Business Review in 1979, entitled "Link Manufacturing Process and Product Life Cycles" and "The Dynamics of Process-Product Life Cycles." The authors used this matrix to examine market-manufacturing congruence issues and to facilitate the understanding of the strategic options available to a company. The matrix itself consists of two dimensions, product structure/product life cycle and process structure/process life cycle. The production process used to manufacture a product moves through a series of stages, much like the stages of products and markets, which begins with a highly flexible, high-cost process and progresses toward increasing standardization, mechanization, and automation, culmina

PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE AND INDUSTRY LIFE CYCLE Recognizing that all living things go through a cycle of birth, growth, maturity, and death, the inspiration for the concepts of product life cycle and industry life cycle comes from biology. The life-cycle concept is an appropriate description of what happens to products and industries over time. When applied to organizations, the product life cycle and industry life cycle contain the four stages of introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. This concept is much more than an interesting analogy of business and biology. In biology, a living organism's position in its life cycle leads to different courses of action concerning the organism's future. An industry's position and a product's position in their life cycles also lead to very different decisions concerning their futures. Consequently, the life-cycle concept was adopted from biology for use as a strategic planning tool for products and industries. The following sec

PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE AND INDUSTRY LIFE CYCLE Recognizing that all living things go through a cycle of birth, growth, maturity, and death, the inspiration for the concepts of product life cycle and industry life cycle comes from biology. The life-cycle concept is an appropriate description of what happens to products and industries over time. When applied to organizations, the product life cycle and industry life cycle contain the four stages of introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. This concept is much more than an interesting analogy of business and biology. In biology, a living organism's position in its life cycle leads to different courses of action concerning the organism's future. An industry's position and a product's position in their life cycles also lead to very different decisions concerning their futures. Consequently, the life-cycle concept was adopted from biology for use as a strategic planning tool for products and industries. The following sec