Recruitment of sales personnel is an endless job for any organisation. Recruitment of the right type of salesmen possessing all the essential qualities in sufficient number is necessary to carry out the selling activities of an organisation.
This is totally dependent on a sound recruitment policy. The success of any organisation depends on the performance of its sales force and such performance depends a lot on their quality. It has been rightly pointed out that salesman is the spearhead of any business.
The aim of any recruitment policy should always be to choose the right man for the right job. Otherwise, the recruitees become a burden on the organisation. A good recruitment policy builds a stable and efficient work force and helps in achieving organisational goals and objectives in a planned and systematic manner.
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A good recruitment policy also reduces the worries of the management by considerably reducing the supervising responsibilities. In sum, a good sales force once recruited, contributes significantly to increased sales as well as higher profit of an organisation. This increases the confidence of the sales manager as the leader of the sales force.
Recruitment of salesmen is considered as an endless job for any organisation. The need for continuous recruitment is felt because of the following reasons:
1. To replace the vacancy created:
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Vacancy, in an organisation usually arises due to resignation, retirement, death and promotion of the salesmen on roll. Vacancies arising out of these reasons are to be filled up through recruitment in the form of replacement. Such recruitments have to be undertaken as early as possible so that the sales activity of the organisation does not suffer.
2. To cope up with expansion programmes:
Industries grow and expand with the passage of time. Companies often add new products to the existing product line, enter new markets, and undertake aggressive selling and so on. Such expansion programmes most often lead to the creation of additional work in the sales organisation. To cope up with the additional work load, the need of recruitment of additional sales personnel arises in an organisation.
The need of salesmen and the frequency with which they are to be recruited vary from company to company in accordance with the products to be sold, the size of the firm, the choice of the channels of distribution by the firm, firm’s financial position, and the nature of the market to be covered.
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As soon as the recruitment need of sales personnel arises in an organisation, the exact requirement with regards to the number of sales personnel and their requisite qualification and qualities has to be determined.
This makes the recruitment of salesmen an important problem which has to be faced with caution. The number of sales personnel to be appointed can be ascertained from the list of retirements, resignations, deaths, promotions and the type of expansion programme that the organisation is undertaking. A thorough analysis of the work that the future recruitee will perform, otherwise known as job analysis, has to be done.
Such a job analysis necessarily indicates the duties, responsibilities, activities, and assignments of the sales force. It also helps to point out the qualities of head and heart that salesman should possess to fit in to the job.