Market Hunting

Market hunting is about increasing the market share in the targeted markets. The sales function is crucial to this. Quote from Sales force design for strategic advantage on this: >The sales force typically is the most empowered organization in a company. Usually working alone and unsupervised, salespeople are trusted with the company's most important asset - it's customers. The most important connection the customer has with a company could be the salesperson; for many customers, the sales person *is* the company. A sales force is a powerful force. There is not a single sales force anywhere that could not seriously hurt its company's performance. Likewise, there is not a sales force anywhere that could not significantly improve its company's position. Five elements determine the success of a sales force:

1. What is the quality of the information the sales force has at its disposal?
2. What is the competitive strategy deployed by the company within the market?
3. How well is the company equipped to recruit good sales representatives and how does the company train its sales force?
4. What are the motivation and compensation systems used by the company?
5. How does the company monitor the performance of its sales representatives?

In making business plans it is important to calculate how much sales capacity is required. For this it is important to keep metrics such as: the expected # sales calls to acquire a new customer and the success rates of sales effort. In determining the plan on ho to approach the customers , a so called go-to-market strategy it is important to meet the customers where they do want to do do business. A Go-To-Market map helps revealing major issues for a company. Companies could consider Channel partnering to go to market and remain conservative with respect to Overestimating impact of online channels.