Broad Principles Of Public Relations Assessment Answer

5.1. Refer to Appendix 2, Marketing by the Numbers, to determine the number of salespeople a company needs if it has 3000 customers who need to be called on 10 times per year. Each sales call lasts approximately 2 1/2 hours, and each sales rep has approximately 1,250 hours per year to devote to customers per year.

5.2. If each sales representative earns a salary of $60,000 per year, what sales are necessary to break even on the sales force costs if the company has a contribution margin of 40 percent? What effect will adding each additional sales representative have on the break-even sales?

Ans-1)

The company needs to consider several factors the most primary of which is that there needs to be proper balance between the customer needs and the way the company meets those requiremnts while keeping in mind the costs and the customer price preferences. The channel objectives should be directed towards targeted levels of customer service, identify the segments which needs to be served as well as minimize the costs in servicing the consumers. A critical analysis has to be done with respect to the intermediary alternatives that is available for the customer. The duty of each channel participants has to be determined so that a particular distribution method is adopted among intensive distribution, exclusive distribution or selective distribution. All these three alternatives needs to be evaluated on the basis of economic, control and adaptive capabilities. It is the general expectation of the consumers that any low priced item will be available in a mass merchandising retail or drug outlet. Although online selling has become quite popular consumers will not be willing to pay for the shipping charges for a low cost item.

Ans-2)

The marketing appeals which are popularly used during communication process are logic appeals, emotional appeals and ethical appeals which are explained as follows:
Logic appeals – It consists of marketing the product based on the functional value or the attributes of the product which can logically create certain benefits for the customer. It is an informative way of doing marketing communication
Emotional Appeal – This way of marketing communication aims at creating an emotional value or touch the soft corner of the consumers to bring about change in their attitude.
Ethical Appeal – It is something which aims at creating credibility through a cognitive approach which results in the change of the attitude because of the strong ethical reasons to do so(Volkov, 2005).

Ans-3)

The six broad principles of public relations can be listed as follows:

•    Telling the truth
•    Back it up with action
•    Hear what the customer has to say
•    Make arrangements for the future
•    Look at public relations in such a way that it is the most important pillar of an organization
•    One needs to have perseverance, remain patient and always have a smile on his face
Obama administration has religiously maintained all these principles of public relations with utmost importance. While being in the administration he has been bold and upright about his policy decisions like Obamacare, etc. although it has faced significant opposition at the congress. He always lends a close ear to his subjects as well as opposition to get to a decision and his decisions are based on a forward outlook for the country. He has proved to be patient with several issues like the Syria war or the Ukraine fiasco of the Russians.

Ans- 4)

The seven step process of personal selling consists of prospecting, pre-approach, approach, presentation, meeting objections, closing the sale and follow-up(Deeter-Schmelz, 2016). In the present scenario these steps can be applied as follows:
•    First of all I would set up a good relation with the professor mostly through active participation and asking intelligent questions in class
•    Understand the professor perception and preferences from the teaching assistant who is supposed to be the pre-approach
•    Then finally I would approach the teacher with my issue
•    Make a strong presentation that how I always participate meaningfully in the class and my track record also proves it although I am not able to make the final cut
•    The professor would definitely provide some counter arguments which I need to mitigate through logical reasoning
•    At last I would establish my point through the previous five steps that I deserve an A
•    Lastly I would closely monitor my grades and look for a possible improvement due to the push from the professor

Ans-5.1)

The given numerical can be solved using the following formula:

                                            NC ? FC ? LC   
                                NS    =     ————————    
                                                        TA
Where,
    NS = number of salespeople
    NC = number of customers
    FC = average frequency of customer calls per customer
    LC = average length of customer call
    TA = time an average salesperson has available for selling per year
Therefore, 
1,000 ?10? 2.5   
                    NS = ———————    =    20 salespeople
                                    1,250

Ans-5.2)

Ifwe assume there to be 500 sales person then the sales amount to breakeven would be $30 million.
With addition of an extra salesman the breakeven sales would increase depending on the commission given to the sales person.

References

Deeter-Schmelz, D.R. (2016) ‘Personal selling and sales management abstracts’, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, pp. 1–15. Doi: 10.1080/08853134.2016.1138704.
Volkov, M. (2005) ‘Cases in marketing and marketing communication’, Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 13(1), pp. 73–74. Doi: 10.1016/s1441-3582(05)70071-9.

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