Compared with other industries, cement industry sales have the following characteristics: the sales radius depends on the transportation cost and the price difference between production and sales places, with significant locality; dry rotary kiln products become the dominant products in the cement market, with serious product homogenization; the target customers are mainly large commercial mixing companies, large real estate developers, large and medium-sized hydropower stations, highway and high-speed railway projects, large cement distributors and cement stores, etc. They are in a strong position in sales; they generally adopt the dual channel management mode of “direct sales mode as the main mode and dealer mode as the supplement”, and the sales channels are short; they spend less on advertising, and personnel sales are dominant. It is because of the special characteristics of the cement industry that the construction and management of the marketing team occupies a very important position in the production and operation of cement enterprises, so it is of great practical significance to study the management plan of the marketing team of cement enterprises in the buyer’s market.
1 Analysis of the current situation of cement enterprise marketing team management
First, the comprehensive quality of team members needs to be improved. The fierce market competition has put forward higher requirements for the marketing team members of cement enterprises, which not only need strong negotiation skills, sales skills and complaint handling skills, but also need rich knowledge of cement, concrete and financial knowledge. However, most of the current cement enterprises’ marketing personnel have low education, and the knowledge and concepts they possess are relatively old (for example, they think that product price determines everything and do not understand that any product provides comprehensive value), while cement enterprises also lack systematic training about cement, concrete and finance, which makes it difficult for marketing personnel to perform their jobs well.
Second, there is a conflict between marketers and dealers in order to grab orders. Cement enterprises generally adopt the dual channel management mode of direct sales and distribution, and the cement sales area is restricted by the transportation radius, and the narrow sales radius determines that the marketers and dealers are in the same sales area, so the order grabbing conflict is inevitable. Most cement companies do not take appropriate management measures in the face of single-order conflicts between marketers and distributors, but simply adopt the practice of “suppressing salesmen and supporting distributors”, which does not cause the loss of overall market share, but seriously affects the improvement of the management level of the marketing team.
Third, the lack of effective compensation incentives to stimulate the enthusiasm of marketing staff. Many cement companies are results-oriented, lack of scientific and reasonable compensation incentive mechanism, only to individual sales and return ratio ring accounting. In such a context, marketers are prone to short-sighted behavior, taking such means as controlling shipment volume and extending the contract payback time to cope with performance assessment, which not only gives opponents an opportunity to take advantage of, but also is not conducive to the enterprise’s overall control of the entire market.
Fourth, the sales manager lacks experience in team management. Many cement companies’ sales managers start from front-line business, which has the advantage of being familiar with the operation of products and business, but since there is no previous management training in sales, they lack the management experience and skills of sales team. Due to the lack of team management experience, some sales managers will panic when leading the sales team to encounter problems, and they themselves will lose confidence because they find it difficult to lead the team.
2 The management plan of cement enterprise marketing team in the new era
2.1 Selecting appropriate marketing strategies
Under the buyer’s market, the traditional marketing methods can no longer adapt to the needs of cement enterprise development, so cement enterprises must adjust their marketing strategies in real time and develop competitive strategies and tactics that can be realized. Specifically, the marketing strategies that cement enterprises can use include the following (as shown in the table below)
2.2 Building a learning marketing team and strengthening systematic training of marketing personnel
On the one hand, cement enterprises should actively build a learning marketing team. Scholars Peter? St. Gee research found that many enterprise sales team members are not low in personal IQ, are about 1.20, but the overall IQ of the team is only about 60, so the communication and collaboration of marketing team members is very important, it can make all members’ creativity sublimated, and effectively improve the overall strength of the marketing team. Based on this, cement enterprises should organize marketing personnel for team learning, so that marketing personnel can learn from each other and share their successful sales experience and summarize the lessons of failure through learning and exchange, so that team members can realize the communication of the mind and achieve the purpose of common growth of team members.
On the other hand, cement enterprises should effectively strengthen the systematic training of marketing personnel. Cement enterprises to strengthen the importance of training for marketing personnel, while encouraging marketers to improve self-learning, but also by the Human Resources Department according to the needs of marketing personnel to develop annual training plans, and at the end of each training, timely assessment of the effect through testing and inspection. Specifically, the systematic training of cement enterprise marketing personnel mainly includes the following four aspects.
① corporate culture training, mainly into the company’s corporate culture, sales products and conduction of the company’s culture, corporate values and comprehensive value of products.
② marketing theoretical knowledge training, for marketing front-line personnel, mainly public relations etiquette, marketing skills, market research and other courses to maintain a good social image of the enterprise, improve marketing skills and business proficiency; for regional sales managers, mainly brand promotion, channel construction, receivables management, market planning and other courses to improve problem-solving skills; for middle and senior management leaders, mainly marketing team culture building, marketing management, brand management and courses related to leadership art.
③Theoretical knowledge training, including marketing-specific training courses as well as financial-related knowledge, cement, concrete, receivables management and other training courses.
④ Practical training, including classic case analysis, business negotiation and expansion training, aiming to improve the sales ability of marketing personnel through real-life training.
2.3 Construct a scientific and reasonable salary incentive system
(1) Design reasonable KPI. currently, the KPI designed by many cement enterprises’ marketing team personnel compensation only includes sales volume and default receivables, while from the marketing point of view, the indicators that can reflect the long-term goals of enterprises are profit and consumer satisfaction, not sales volume. Based on this, cement enterprises should incorporate profit and customer satisfaction into the KPI of marketing personnel to combine the long-term goals of enterprises and marketing personnel, so as to achieve the efficacy of developing and motivating marketing personnel.
(2) Develop a reasonable remuneration system. At this stage, many cement companies emphasize the individual incentives of marketing personnel and ignore the overall rewards of the marketing team, in fact, it is more meaningful to maximize the effectiveness of the marketing team than the good performance of individual marketers. Therefore, the payroll design must take into account how to maximize the performance of the entire marketing team, and strive to combine the individual earnings of marketers and team earnings. For example, 10% of the individual income of the marketing staff can be extracted as a team common split income, and then the team common split income by the marketing team members to be distributed equally; area manager attached to the area 50% of the performance pay, the effect of this can encourage the marketing staff to unite and cooperate, forcing managers to strengthen regional management, improve work performance, so that the enterprise to obtain greater gains.
2.4 Strengthen the management of channel conflicts
The author believes that cement enterprises can strengthen the management of channel conflicts from the following aspects.
① Enterprises assess accounts receivable for direct supply customers, assess distribution management for carriers, and manage and assess distributors. Distributors manage and assess the distributors and stores in their respective regions. (i) Monthly marketing personnel visit regional markets from time to time for inspection and guidance, supervising while helping their channel management and expansion.
② enterprise and direct supply customers according to the volume and price payment signed a sales and purchase contract; signed a carrier contract with the carrier, including the responsibility of carriage and penalties for violations; signed a distribution contract with distributors, including the end of the year sales targets, promotion plans, channel development, maintenance and penalties, sales targets to complete incentives to cash, accounts receivable assessment, etc., the implementation of quantitative assessment index management.
③ All channel customers are required to operate legally, compliantly and reasonably in accordance with the company’s sales channel management system, and the marketing center manages the marketing channels strictly in accordance with the institutionalization, and increases the penalties for violators.
3 Conclusion
At this stage, many cement companies do not pay attention to marketing team management, leading to problems such as low motivation of marketing staff, conflicts between marketing staff and dealers in grabbing orders, and insufficient reasonable performance incentives for marketing staff. In this paper, the author makes suggestions to improve the competitiveness of the marketing team of cement enterprises from the current situation of marketing team management in the buyer’s market, from the perspectives of staff training, team building, conflict management and salary incentive, etc.