Entering Sales Expenses When Sales Staff Sells All Offerings
Q: I using your financial model app to create my business plan and I'm not sure how I should enter my sales staff expense when they sell all of my offerings and are not directly selling a specific offering.
A: Our financial model enables you to model several different types of sales and marketing expenses in order for you to reflect what mix of expenses is most representative for your business plan and our model will automatically report those expenses so that your financial reports properly reflect the correct accounting rules. In your case, if the same sales force is selling multiple offerings, then the sales staff is part of the General Sales and Marketing Expense and not a direct sales expense for any individual offering. Therefore that type of sales staffing is entered on the main menu under Staff > General Sales and Marketing Staff Hiring > Level 1 - Level 4. Your various levels there might include: VP of Sales and Marketing, Director of Marketing, Product Manager, and Sales Executive. The Sales Executive role is the a role that one would reasonably expect to continue to ramp up with total sales revenue, regardless of the offering mix because that sales staff is selling across multiple offerings. See the screen shot below of how a General Sales and Marketing staff position might look in your input form in the financial model:
On the other hand, if you have direct sales and marketing expenses that are dedicated to a particular offering, such as lead generation expense, direct sales staffing. direct sales commissions, or direct account management, then all of those types of sales and marketing expenses are entered in the offering assumptions on the main menu under Offerings > Offering 1 - 15 > Customer Acquisition Cost (for direct sales-related expenses) and Offerings > Offering 1 - 15 > Offering Cost (for direct account management expenses). See the screen shot below of how direct sales expenses might look in your input form in the financial model:
