ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Tran Thi Thu Giang MA., Head of the Department of Foreign Languages, National Economics University. Her wide knowledge and her logical way of thinking have been of great value for me. Her understanding, encouraging and personal guidance have provided a good basis for the present report. Besides, I would like to thank the company AMICA Corp for providing us with a good environment and facilities to complete this report. The company gave me an opportunity to participate and learn about the operation of the company, and provided me valuable information as the guidance of my report. Finally, an honorable mention goes to our families and friends for their understandings and supports on me in completing this report. Without helps of the particular that mentioned above, I would face many difficulties while doing this project. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 INTRODUCTION Sales activities play an important role in enhancing the business and the development of the company. In order to carry out long term and short term targets, nowadays, businesses all care much about the training the sales force and completing the factors affecting sales activities. After three-month period of internship as a salesperson at the website www.khoadaotao.vn, belonging to AMICA Corp, I found that the sales activities have shortcomings, which need improving. Therefore, in the range of my intern report, I chose the topic for study: “Improving the factors to enhance sales activities at the website www.khoadaotao.vn” Study targets: 1. Examine the fact of sales activities at the website www.khoadaotao.vn 2. Find out the reason for the shortcomings that effect on the sales activities 3. Point out some recommendations to improve these shortcomings and develop sales activities. This report studied the sales activities at the company AMICA Corp, especially the website www.khoadaotao.vn in the field of providing the service of online advertising. In the range of the report, the author uses the study methods such as comprehensive analysis, comparison, observation. In addition, the questions are also prepared to interview the employees, especially salespeople to get more information about the fact of sales activities. About the structure of the report, in addition to the Introduction, Conclusion, Appendix and References, the report includes four main chapters: Chapter I – Introduction of AMICA Corp Chapter II – The theoretical framework used to the website www.khoadaotao.vn Chapter III – The weakness of factors affecting sales activities at the website www.khoadaotao.vn Chapter III – The weakness of factors affecting sales activities at the website www.khoadaotao.vn 3 Chapter I – Introduction of AMICA Corp 1. Overview of AMICA Corp 1.1. History and development of AMICA Corp AMICA Corp is a corporation providing solutions to develop businesses. The phrase AMICA is the abbreviation of Accomplishment of Management by Intelligence, Creation, and Aspiration. The corporation was established on the first, July 2007, managed by the people who were managers and administrators of multinational companies, researchers in Vietnam who studied management and business development in developed countries. In fact, almost Vietnamese businesses are small and middle ones, who have to face problems related to changing business strategies, developing trademark, training and supplementing human, applying new technology in management and business The businesses often look for solutions from the companies, who provide individual services of each major field. Thus, this activity takes them much of time and cost much of fee. Moreover, the solutions from different sources can be easily lack of internal synchronism while the businesses need an entire solution to balance human resources and to build key competitive ability. Being aware of that fact, AMICA Corp provides solutions to develop business basing on researches and a deep knowledge of businesses’ fields and characteristics. AMICA Corp researches businesses in totality range from general strategies to detail activities. According to the result of researches, AMCIA Corp suggests suitable solutions within general strategies, ensuring the ability of putting into execution and synchronism of solutions, and bringing the most effect to businesses. 1.2. Organization of AMCIA Corp The head office of AMICA Corp is at 41A, Tran Quang Dieu Street, Dong Da District, Hanoi with three telephone lines for three business fields, each of which has its own website. They are www.amica.vn for the field of providing solutions to develop business in forms of training courses, www.nguonvieclam.vn for the field of providing recruitment information to job seekers and providing human resources to businesses, and www.khoadaotao.vn for the field of providing training and learning courses for learners. Since AMICA Corp has just been established for three 4 years, the organization structure is not full worked and does not reach a necessary standard. One person must deal with not only his/her duty, but also others’ work. - One general director is responsible for all the activities of three websites and the whole company. He himself is a professor in the training courses of AMCIA Corp. - One human resources director is responsible for managing human resources such as recruiting, managing database of employees. He is also the customer service director, generally responsible for caring customers of two websites www.nguonvieclam.vn and www.khoadaotao.vn. In addition, he is the major administrator of the website www.nguonvieclam.vn, which provides businesses’ recruitment information to job seekers and provides service of seeking the most suitable candidates to businesses, and www.khoadaotao.vn, which plays a bridge connecting trainers and learners, who have needs of study. - One accountant does accounting to keep and develop capital and asset of the company, paying taxes, calculating salary for the whole employees, and many other duties related to accounting. In addition, this accountant also works as other 5 positions, such as administrator of website www.amica.vn, salesperson, customer care staff, and switchboard staff for all three fields of the company. - Information Technology (IT) person must ensure the fluency of the internal and external network system. It means that all the tasks of installing software and hardware; ensuring security for three websites against hackers; finding solutions for the spring problems related to technology must be done to make sure the best IT condition for the whole company’s activities. 1.3. Business field and business activities 1.3.1. Service of providing solutions to develop business in form of training courses AMICA Corp owns three different websites for three business fields. The website www.amica.vn is the official one for the first field: providing solutions to develop business. All the activities of the website are presented in the following chart: Activities of the website www.amica.vn 1.3.2. Service of providing information about recruitment The official website for this field is www.nguonvieclam.vn, consultants of which are holding key positions in International Corporations. 6 AMICA Corporation Training management Consulting, organizing and developing human resources Building trademark Specialty training Marketing Finance Human resources Supermarket management Skill training Leadership skill Sales skill Supervision skill Project management skill Job-seeking skill Consulting strategies Business strategies Financing - Accounting Marketing strategies Human management Distribution channel Developing human resources Consulting human Providing human Leasing human Outsourcing Trademark building Identification system Market positioning Intelligence owning Media & Promotion PR, events Media Advertsing film Exhibition & fair Managing informatics & E-commerce E-commerce Website designing E-advertising E-advertising agent Managing informatics Consulting informatics solutions Management softwares Trade representative The website provides online recruitment services for candidates who are seeking for a job. Besides, the website provides service of senior human recruitment according to business’ needs by looking for profile, interviewing preliminarily, assessing the qualifications, experience, characters of candidates in order to save time and cost for business. The website specially focuses on the fields: - Sales and fast moving consumer goods marketing - Finance and Banking - Foreign trade - Information Technology - Telecommunication - Auditing/ Accounting - Tourism and Hotel Inland and foreign big corporations who used and high appreciated this service are Pepsi, Trung Nguyen Corporation, ITL, VOBECO, HBC, HG Travel… Moreover, the website includes many articles of career orientation, necessary skills for jobs and major courses. Thus, more and more people visit the website to seek opportunities of job, promotion for them. The guidelines for activities is “www.nguonvieclam.vn – where talents radiant”. 1.3.3. Service of providing information about training to the learners Nowadays, there is a big shortage of personnel who are basically trained and have skills suitable with their job. Therefore, the website www.khoadaotao.vn is established as an information channel to develop ability of community, a bridge connecting the people need to study and trainers. This helps enhance Vietnamese people’s ability, develop knowledge and our economy to compete with other countries. The major services of the website www.khoadaotao.vn for users: To learners and the people who care about training: - Finding quickly the suitable course such as developing aptitude, practicing working skill, adding knowledge, enhance working level. The courses are classified scientifically with searching engine, which is easy to use. - Getting enough information about the course such as teaching content, pictures, tuition, and online registration with the trainer… - Choosing the most suitable trainer in the database, which includes hundreds of inland and foreign trainers and educators. 7 - Downloading the e-lecture, documentary information on every field for study from “Electronic library”. - Sharing learning and career experience with other people. - Getting favours or scholarships from inland and foreign programs. To the trainners and educators: - Broadcasting quickly the training courses with full of information, pictures of courses and trainers to the right objectives. - Sending quickly information to tens thousand learners via “Courses news”. Getting feedback about the course via email. - Advertising courses attached pictures, teaching document. - Spreading trademarks and training programs via trainer’s special introduction section, outstanding courses on the homepage, and logo/banner at the attractive positions. - Uploading “Lecturer library” to share knowledge and broadcast trademark. - Uploading “Favoured courses” to attract learners and agglomerate spreading, approaching learners with www.khoadaotao.vn. The website is administered by the Board of Administration including consultants, trainers, and experts in many fields. 2. The fact of sales activities at the website www.khoadaotao.vn 2.1. Product and business field According to these characters above, readers can see that product of the website www.khoadaotao.vn is services rather than objects on display. The duty of salespeople is to buy advertising services on website to trainers, who provide training courses. The services include: - Advertising training courses with no pay within 30 days - Advertising training courses with special regulations - Broadcasting trademark on the homepage with banner/logo - Broadcasting trademark on the inside page with banner/logo 2.2. Sales force management AMICA Corp is a small company with limited human resources of four members while there are three business fields, so each employee must take other duties beside his/her major job. For example, the director himself is a salesperson as well; the accountant herself is a salesperson and switchboard staff, too. In fact, every one in the company is salespeople and there is no real sales force for the website 8 www.khoadaotao.vn. That one person must take many duties will result in overloading for them; therefore the working result is not as good as expected, especially sales activities are not invested and moderately cared. Moreover, the sales force is not methodically trained from the time they are recruited. All the knowledge and information about types of customers, competitors, strategies, or products must be methodically taught before the sales force enter the battle. However, all the information is just retransmitted from the old salespeople to the new ones. Therefore, the salespeople cannot get enough information and knowledge for their job. This influences badly on their strategic planning to compete with other websites, presenting and demonstrating to the customers, etc. On the other hand, the motivation for sales force is not strong enough to encourage them loving their work. Many salespeople came and went only because the salary and good-treatment policies of the company, which until now have not been improved yet, were not good. The sales force is considered as making money engines of the company, and squeezed their labour to fetch money to energize the website and the company. On their return, they just get dissatisfaction with the company’s policies. 2.3. Process of selling of the website www.khoadaotao.vn The website www.khoadaotao.vn provides online broadcasting services to trainers, and they use online advertisement form, which includes both traditional advertisement and direct marketing to bring their service to their customers. The e- marketing strategies have been used rather effectively in their business via the performance and the facility of the website, which is easy for user to use. However, sales force does not know how to apply sensibly e-marketing to their work. Sometimes they abuse it while they do not take advantage of it in the process of selling at times. That affects a lot their sales activities. 9 Chapter II – Theoretical framework used for the website www.khoadaotao.vn 1. Sales force management In this report, the theory used and applied to the situation of the website www.khoadaotao.vn is section of Sales force management from The principle of Marketing textbook by Philip Kotler and Gary Amstrong. It includes the activities of training, compensating, supervising, and evaluating the sales force. 1.1 . Training salespeople Many companies used to send their new salespeople into the field almost immediately after hiring them. They would be given samples, order books, and general instructions. Training programs were luxuries. To many companies, at raining program translated into much expense for instructors, materials, space, and salary for a person who was not yet selling, and a loss of sales opportunities because the person was not in the field. Today’s new salespeople, however, may spend anywhere form a few weeks or months to a year or more in training. The average training period is four months. Training programs have several goals. Salespeople need to know and identify with the company, so most training programs begin by describing the company’s history and objectives, its organization, its financial structure and facilities, and its chief products and markets. Sales people also need to know the company products, so sales trainees are shown how products are produced and how they work. They also need to know customers’ and competitors’ characteristics, so the training program teaches them about competitors’ strategies and about different types of customers and their needs, buying motives, and buying habits. Because sales people must know how to make effective presentations, they are trained in the principles of selling. They learn how to divide time between active and potential accounts and how to use an expense account, prepare reports, and route communications effectively. 1.2. Compensating sales people To attract salespeople, a company must have an appealing compensation plan. These plans vary greatly both by industry and by companies within the same 10 [...]... advantage of demonstration aids of the company: This require the sales force to be clear about the feature of the online advertising services at the website They should estimate the spring situations in advance to be active with the 29 consideration of the customers Besides, the demonstration aids are available for approaching customers, so the salespeople should utilize what they have to push their sales activities. .. allow salespeople to spend much time making acquainted with the job Moreover, they are quite passive when they perform and put the sales plans into execution They are not aware of the importance of the sales to the website and the company; even have no ideas to improve the bad results from the former salespeople That is the biggest problem in sales force, which contributes to the weakness of the sales activities. .. terms in the contract such as reconfirming the purchase terms on phone or email, sending email of thanks, taking the opinions about the services When the customer raises any question about the service, the salesperson will make the adjustment to balance the expectation of the customer and the right of the website However, the customers often use the services of the website one time and do not keep their... sure that all the applications can satisfy needs of customers That is to supervise and measure the activities of their site, advertising models and manage the advertising 17 2.3 Researching and having deep knowledge of needs – interests of customers The value of the site is the number of visitors It means that if the site makes the high level of activity, it is one of precious assets The increase of level... However, demonstration aids are rather adequate such as slides, flip charts or booklets, which are prepared for enhancing selling Yet, the salespeople do not often use these aids to show the information and achievement of the company and the website as well The customers cannot see what the website does, what the website has achieved It is certain that their belief is not reinforced If the aids are combined... spiritual life of the whole company The sales force does not get any encouragement from the management and it results in shortage of motivation and passion to do their work This disadvantageous factor indirectly effects on the sales activities through the motivation of the sales force from the management Sales quotas The management of all the companies also set the higher sales quotas than sales forecast... salary is the most important motive influencing the performance of the employees, the company should modify the salary regulation for the staff The company must pay the employees the salary that insures their quality of life, at least monthly expenditure The management can apply the regulation of raising salary each six months basing on the result of performance to encourage them Another problem is the commitment... performance The manager can compare the result of net sales, gross profit, sales expense, number of new customers, and number of lost customers… of the current time and the past time to adjust the productivity of the current sales force The sales force needs to know their productivity to improve it and develop as well After showing the result of working and the effectiveness of sales force’s performance, the. .. when the salesperson does not find the information to qualify the customers, it results in wrong strategies later, which may wreck all the process 2.2 Step 2 – Pre-approach After defining the qualified potential customers, the salesperson continues to look for the information of the customers he or she tends to approach by access the website of customers or the information of customer on the website of. .. management Although the money value is not considering, the sales force feel encouraged and consoled, which partly offsets their effort However, it is not really enough for the expectation of the sales force of the company The management had better give more incentives to the salespeople if he wants sales activities to develop further 2 The shortcomings in the process of selling In theory, the general selling