VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
SCHOOL OF BUSINESS TA THI MAI LOAN SALES FORCE MANAGEMENT IN UNDERGRADUATE EDUCAITON
THE CASE OF FPT UNIVERSITY
Major: Business Administration
Code: 60 34 05 MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION THESIS SUMMARY Supervisor: Dr. Tran Doan Kim
Hanoi – 2012

vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS


1.3.4 Motivating sales personnel 22
1.3.5 Compensating sales personnel 24
1.3.6 Sales meetings and sales contests 25
1.4 Special considerations of sales force management in education sector 25
CHAPTER 2: ANALYSIS OF FPT UNIVERSITY SALES FORCE 27
2.1 Introduction about FPT University 27
2.1.1 History of FPT University 27
2.1.2 Organization structure 28
2.2 Sales forces management at FPT University 29
2.2.1 Model 29
2.2.2 Implementation of sales force management at FPT University 31
2.2.3 Measuring sales force productivity 36
2.2.4 Customer satisfactions 40
2.2.5 Some overview on Education market and Sales force management
in some other Universities and Institutions 42
2.2.6 SWOT analysis 44
CHAPTER 3: RECOMMENDATIONS 48
3.1 Restructuring sales department 48
3.2 Building Compensation and Promotion policies 50
3.3 Improving recruitment and training 54
3.4 Applying CRM software 64
3.4.1 What is CRM? 64
3.4.2 Why should FU apply CRM in sales activities? 65
3.5 Improving customer satisfactions 65
REFERENCES 68

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Staff’s satisfaction 35


INTRODUCTION
1. Problem background
Sales force is a powerful asset of selling organizations. It is a crucial factor
contributes to the success and stable development of the firm. A good sales
force management can help the company to increase productivities as well as
its competitive advantages. In the past, Vietnamese always think traditionally
that there is not the relationship between the buyers and sellers in the
education in Vietnam. They believe that education belongs to the government
and they think that the relationship between students and professors, between
purples and teachers are some things respectful which cannot be bought and
sold. In some recent years, with the open door policy of the Ministry of
Education, there have been many Schools and Universities both State owned
and private being born. There are more than 200 all kinds of Universities in
Vietnam up to now. With the population of more than 80 million, the demand
of training, which cannot be satisfied by the state owned University system, is
very high. The appearance of the private high standard Universities like FPT
University, Dai Nam University, Van Xuan University, Chu Van An
University… is more and more, especially the corporate training programs in
Vietnam like Troy, Latrobe, Grigg, RMIT, North Central… In which FPT
University is one of the model of University of company in Vietnam. To
compete and survive, FPT University has considered the university like an
invisible product to sales and organized its sales force. At the first time, the
university had a certain success because of the high appreciation on sales as
well as the way it sales in undergraduate education. However, after some
years of operation, the competitors has quickly copied the way it sales and it
seems that the university has some difficulties now.
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The thesis “Sales force management in undergraduate educaiton the case of fpt

two months.
6. Methods
This study applies the two following methods:
 Reviewing of related literature
 Interviewing relevant people
Reviewing of related literature: This will examine the multidisciplinary
theories of sales force management and compare between theory and practical
activities.
Interviewing: Questions will be developed and structured interviews are
conducted for those who are professors in this field and who are people in
charge of FU’s sales force.
7. Significance
In the perspective of increasingly high competition and sales pressure, the
study focuses on analyzing and recommending useful solutions to enhance the
effectiveness of sales force management and competitiveness of FU. Besides,
this study also gives the overview of the sales force management in
education- the conception has been recognized but not yet mentioned directly.
8. Limitation
The limitations of the study lay on analyzing only FU. Date sources are not
rich enough to have a bigger picture of this industry. Moreover, most
information collected from inner operation therefore it has been hard to
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approach and collect. As a new field that not yet mentioned before, it is also
hard for the author to get references from other researches and sources.
9. Expected results
The study will give a general overview of sales force management in
Vietnam’s education industry, which is an old but new conception.
By the observation, analysis and report on the current situation of FU, the
author hopes that her solutions given in this study will be applied in reality

significance – in addition to the management of personal selling, sales
management meant management of all marketing activities, including
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advertising, sales promotion, marketing research, physical distribution,
pricing, and product merchandising.”
- Definition by Charles M. Futrell [3] “Sales management is the
attainment of sales force goals in an effective and efficient manner
through planning, staffing, training, leading, and controlling
organizational resources”
In general, sales force management which is referred to personnel-related
responsibilities, involves a number of key areas including: performance
measurement, selection and training of sales people and motivational
methods.
Sales force management involves three different tasks. Firstly, it is the
methods for selling and managing a sales territory. There are no prescriptive
methods for doing this and is anything, an adaptive approach to selling is
probably best. Secondly, it is the supervision by management which should
include valid performance measurement and suitable motivation methods.
The third task is concerned with the setting up of a sales force in terms of its
organization. The organization and structure of the sales force depend on
several factors. Different business scenarios require different types of sales
force organization. It may be possible to increase sales productivity by
attempting new methods of sales allocation. The new models of sales
allocation are: Segment-based sales force, Functional sales force, Consultative
sales force, Enterprise sales force, Transactional sales force, Hybrid/Queuing
sales force. A highly motivated sales force is instrumental in increasing the
sales productivity of the organization.
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Figure 1.1: The Forecasting Process
There are several methods for sales forecasting as follows:
 Users’ expectations: This method is also known as the buyers’
intentions methods because it relies on the answers of customers about
their expected consumption or purchases of the products.
 Sales force composite: This method requires every sales people to
estimate their expected sales. These estimations are discussed revised,
and then pooled to other levels of the sales organization hierarchy.
 Jury of executive opinion: this method is also called expert opinion
method. It pools the top executives of the company to assess the sales
possibilities for the next period. The forecast may be done by average
the individual judgment or by group discussion. Besides, Delphi
Forecast Objective
Determine dependent and
independent Variables
Develop forecast
procedure
Select Forecast
Analysis Method
Total Forecast
Procedure
Gather and
Analize Data


sales productivity for long time. A sales force should be built in specialized
groups and make the sales increasing stably and continuously. There are many
factors influence to the sales force’s organization and structure. Different
business scenarios require different types of sales force organization.
Basic types of sales organizational structures consist of: (1) Line; (2) Line
staff; (3) Functional; (4) Geographic; (5) Product; (6) Market Figure 1.3: Line Sales Organization

Figure 1.4: Line and Staff Sales Organization

General Manager
Sales manager
Assistant sales
manager Division 1
Assistant sales
manager Division 2

Assistant sales
manager Division 3

Sales people

evaluation and control selling field of the firms.
Sales force is a productive asset of the firm what brings most profit but it is
also costly. Increasing salespeople will increase sales volume and cost
relatively. It is necessary to decide sales force size before design territories for
sales people. There are three popular methods for determining the size of
sales force:
 Breakdown method: this method relies on estimation of sales volume
per one salesperson and sales forecast to determine sales force size.
Number of Salespeople = Sales forecast/Estimation of sales volume
per salesperson
 Workload method: this method rests in assumption that all sales
personnel should responsible for an equal work amount. Management
estimates total work required to serve the market; calculates the number
of customers, total time to contact them and the time available for one
salesperson. Base in this forecast, manager determine total number of
sales force.
 Incremental method: This is the most difficult method to implement
because this method bases on basic premise underlying the incremental
method. It means that sales representatives should be added so long as
the incremental profit produced by their addition exceeds the
incremental cost.
Once the number of the territories is determined, the sales manager can design
the individual territories. The general process might be expected to follows:

13
Evaluate, Revise if
needed
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which the weight reflect the importance of each component to
management.
 Determine the level of each type of quota: in this step, the sales
manager need to determine the level at which each type of quota is to
be set. In establishing level, sales manager must balance a number of
factors, including the potential available in the territory, the impact of
the quota level on the salesperson’s motivation, the long term
objectives of the company and the impact on short-term profitability.
1.3 Implementation of the Sales program
1.3.1 Recruiting sales personnel
Fielding the sales personnel needed to service the company’s customers and
prospects is a key responsibility of sales executives. Discharging this
responsibility requires that the sales executive implement personal-selling
strategy in terms of both the kind and number of sales personnel.
Implementation is by no means a simple process. Having determined the
desired kind of sales personnel, implementation requires job analysis, the
writing of job descriptions, and the deriving of job specifications so that
recruiters will know the qualifications they should look for in prospective
sales employees and sales trainers will know what additional qualifications
they should aim to provide newly recruited sales personnel.
Recruiting and selecting sales personnel is an important part of implementing
personal-selling strategy, but it is not all that involved. Initial sales training is
required to bring new sales personnel up to expected productivity levels, and
continuing sales training is needed to maintain more experienced sales
personnel at high levels of productivity. Motivation and supervisory efforts
help in stimulating sales personnel to apply their skills effectively. It is one

Selection systems for the sales personnel range from simple one-step systems,
consisting of nothing more than an informal personal interview, to complex
multiple-step systems incorporating diverse mechanisms designed to gather
information about applicants for sales jobs. A selection system is a set of
successive “screens”, at any of which an applicant may be dropped from
further consideration.

Figure 1.7: A selection System
Pre-interview screening and preliminary interview
This step is in order to eliminate obviously unqualified applicants. The
preliminary interview can be handled by a low paid clerk or secretary.
Formal applicant form
Formal applicant form is used for collecting the information after a
preliminary interview which indicates that the job candidate is promisingly a
company salesperson. It is filled out by the applicant personally or by an
interviewer who records the applicant’s response.
Interview
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Interview is most widely used selection step and in some companies it
comprises the entire selection system. No other method is quite so useful for
evaluating candidate’s abilities in oral communication, personal appearance,
attitude toward selling and life in general, reaction to obstacles presented face
to face, and personal impact on others.
The recruiter involves in one interview should probably be several persons to
interview and evaluate each applicant. Usually in large company, branch sales
managers or their assistants and human resource executive handle the initial
formal interview and then home office involves in subsequent ones.
There are several interview techniques such as: patterned interview (using a
prepared outline of questions designed before the interview); nondirective

their jobs satisfactorily, become discouraged, and leave the company. If sales
training help new sales personnel to perform their jobs satisfactorily, the rate
of sales personnel turnover declines, recruitment and selection cost falls, and
overall efficiency of the personal-selling operation climbs.

Figure 1.8: A Sales Training Model
Building Sales training programs
There are several types of sales training programs. The most comprehensive
and longest is the training program for newly recruited sales personnel. More
intensive and shorter programs on specialized topics as well as periodic
refresher courses (collectively known as continuing sales training), are
Planning
Phase
Organizing
Phase
Evaluation
Phase
Staffing
Phase
Directing
Phase
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presented for experienced sales personnel. In addition, many companies offer
sales training programs for the sales personnel of their distributor/ or dealers.
Some programs are designed to develop individuals as sales trainers or as
junior-level sales executives. Each type of program serves a different purpose,

record. The gap between the qualification in the job specifications and those a
trainee already has represents the nature and amount of needed training. But it
is not practical to adjust training precisely to individual differences.
- Sales-related marketing policies
To determine initial sales training needs, sales-related marketing policies must
be analyzed. Differences in products and markets mean differences in selling
practices and policies, which in turn, point to needed differences in training
programs.
Identifying continuing training needs
Determining the specific aims for a continuing sales training program requires
identification of specific training needs of experienced sales personnel. Basic
changes in products and markets give rise to need for training, as do changes
in company sales-related marketing policies, procedures, and organization.
But even those products and markets change little and company policies,
procedures and organizations remain stable, sales personnel change, in some
aspect for the worse (as they develop, for example, careless or sloppy working
habits)
Deciding training content
The content of a sales training program, whether an initial or continuing
program, derives from the specific aims that management, after analyzing its
training needs, formulates. Initial training programs are broader in scope and
coverage than are continuing programs. Initial programs provide instruction
covering all important aspects of performance of the sales-person’s job;