• University of Exeter Business School
• Module

Strategic Sales Management

Module description

Sales is the only area of business to generate profit, so strong sales strategists – both inside and outside the sales function - are prized and rewarded by their organisations for their crucial contributions. This module equips leaders with the theoretical knowledge, strategic perspectives and applied skills to design, implement and direct a commercially successful sales operation. From embedding and integrating sales within an organisational ethos, to critically assessing the prospecting, sales and negotiating capabilities of salesforce staff, the module provides a holistic understanding of sales which is immediately transferable into the company boardroom.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The aim of the module is for you to be able to:

• To identify the strategic role of sales within organisations
• To evaluate strategies for the design, operationalisation and management of the sale function of organisations
• To analyse approaches to fulfilling organisational and customer needs through strategic sales management

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. design, implementation and management of a commercial sales operation;
• 2. critically analyse strategic approaches to salesforce and sales function management.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. appraise salesforce prospecting, negotiating and selling competencies;
• 4. apply analytical forecasting, budgetary and performance management strategies;
• 5. critically analyse strategic approaches to creating a ‘sales organisation’.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 6. take a global outlook: apply creative intelligence and ethical imagination to complex problems to ensure that environmental and social governance is taken into account;
• 7. apply critical thinking: present and defend strategic analyses in multiple forms (written, verbal, digital) based on case material, desk based and empirical research;
• 8. work with a collaborative mind-set: give and receive feedback at all levels in a confident and respectful manner. Work inclusively across multi-cultural groups to research, explore and prepare a persuasive argument against an assignment or client brief;
• 9. develop an ethical perspective: improve personal effectiveness through consciously and diligently making decisions on behalf of all stakeholders, environmental, social and financial;
• 10. demonstrate technological and digital literacy: identify and apply relevant technologies to source, process and communicate accurate information.

Syllabus plan

The module will be delivered in five sessions covering the following topics and will include group roundtable discussions, case studies and exercises.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

The re-assessment of each assessment component will take the form of an improved version of the respective individual assignment (with the previous topic of the essay).

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Cuevas, J.M. (2018). The transformation of professional selling: Implications for leading the modern sales organization. Industrial Marketing Management, 69, 198-208

Cuevas, J.M., Donaldson, B., & Lemmens, R. (2019) Sales Management: strategy, process and practice (4^th ed.) London: Red Globe Press

Hr, G., & Aithal, P.S. (2020). Input and output driven sales personnel performance measures: insights from an experiment. International Journal of Case Studies in Business, IT, and Education (IJCSBE), 4(1), 23-37.

Jobber, D., Lancaster, G., & Le Meunier-FitzHugh, K. (2019). Selling and sales management (11^th ed.) London: Pearson

Le Meunier-Fitzhugh, K., & Douglas, T. (2016). Achieving a strategic sales focus: Contemporary issues and future challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Moncrief, W.C. (2017). Are sales as we know it dying… or merely transforming? Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 37(4), 271-279.

Peterson, R.A. (2020). Self-efficacy and personal selling: review and examination with an emphasis on sales performance. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 40(1), 57-71.

Rangarajan, D., Dugan, R., Rouziou, M., & Kunkle, M. (2020). People, process, and performance: Setting an agenda for sales enablement research. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 40(3), 213-220.

Singh, J., Flaherty, K., Sohi, R.S., Deeter-Schmelz, D., Habel, J., Le Meunier-FitzHugh, K., ... & Onyemah, V. (2019). Sales profession and professionals in the age of digitization and artificial intelligence technologies: Concepts, priorities, and questions. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 39(1), 2-22.

Syam, N., & Sharma, A. (2018). Waiting for a sales renaissance in the fourth industrial revolution: Machine learning 

Key words search

Sales, strategies, management, organisations