an internship report on the roles of sales admins in exotic vietnams process of selling mice tours

At Exotic Vietnam, besides Sales Executives, there are also Sales Admins directly joining in the procedure of selling MICE tour.. This is as well the position that the reporter is in; he

SELLING MICE TOURS

Instructor : Chu Quang Phe, M.A

Reporter : Lam Minh Thu Student’s code : 1212100093 Class : 12DTA1 Course : 2012-1016

Company : Exotic Vietnam Company Limited Ho Chi Minh City, May 16th, 2016

ACKOWLEDGEMENTS

With grateful heart, I would like to extend my thanks to all people for helping me through the <Internship report on the roles of Sales Admins in Exotic Vietnam?s process of selling MICE tours=

To begin with, owing to the limitation in practical knowledge and experience as well as time restriction, this report could unavoidably make some mistakes in both content and format Therefore, I was really honored and thankful for having Mr Chu Quang Phe M.A as my Report Instructor who showed his dedication in giving valuable advices, guiding along, and instructing me to edit and perfect the report

The internship opportunity I had with Exotic Vietnam was a great chance for learning and practicing Therefore, I consider myself as a very lucky individual as I was provided with an opportunity to be a part of it I would like to express my deepest gratitude and special thanks to Ms Nguyen Thi Nhu Ngoc, Sales Director, and Ms Tran Ngoc Bang Tam, Sales Executive, who in spite of being extraordinarily busy with their duties, took time to listen to me, directly guide me with enthusiasm and provide me with their useful advices I would also like to thank other seniors as well as my colleagues at Exotic Vietnam for always being willing to give me precious working guidelines and experiences

I am truly thankful for the valuable and useful knowledge that all the lecturers at the University of Finance – Marketing, especially Foreign Language Department, gave me; hence, I can successfully fulfill my report and get myself prepared for my future career as well

This report would not have been accomplished successfully without all of their inputs Thank you and best regards,

Reporter Lam Minh Thu

ABTRACT

MICE tourism is now very potential in Vietnam Therefore, the competition to dominate the market is getting more and more intense when many travel agencies try to take shares of this lucrative market This is also the target market of Exotic Vietnam Although just established two years ago, Exotic Vietnam has been running its business very well In the two years, the company has had actions of changing organizational structure for better efficiency Notably, building a Sales Admin team is a sound step of the company

Working and learning as a Sales Admin for 13 weeks, the reporter exposed to the actual business environment and had a closer look on the tourism industry Through the experience and practical knowledge, first of all, the report presents the information about the company and the department she worked in, namely the Sales Department Then, the report briefly describes the process of selling MICE tours in order to have an overview on it Additionally, the report details the specific and practical tasks which the reporter had done during the internship From the study and analysis of these tasks, the report identifies the strengths and weaknesses in Exotic Vietnam>s building, training and managing the Sales Admin team Finally, through the report, the reporter provides some useful recommendations that can help the company improve its weaknesses

In the end, the internship at Exotic Vietnam is precious to the reporter as it gave her the opportunity to learn and cultivate her knowledge and practical skills It was also the chance for her to expose to the workplace and the pressure of the real tasks, thanks to which she could experience the feeling when constantly striving to achieve the set goals The most important point is that the knowledge from the internship provides the reporter with valuable information and data to complete the report for her upcoming graduation

TÓM TẮT

Du lich MICE là loại hình du lịch đang rất tiềm năng ở Việt Nam Vì vậy cuộc cạnh tranh chiếm lĩnh thị trường đang dần khốc liệt hơn khi rất nhiều công ty du lịch muốn tranh phần trong thị trường béo bở này Công ty Exotic Việt Nam cũng là một trong số đó Dù mới thành lập được hai năm, nhưng Exotic Vietnam vận hành hoạt động kinh doanh của mình rất tốt Trong hai năm, công ty cũng có các động thái thay đổi cơ cấu tổ chức nhắm đến sự hiểu quả trong công việc Nổi bật là việc xây dựng đội ngũ Sales Admin, đây là một bước đi đúng đắn cho sự phát trển của công ty Exotic Việt Nam Làm việc và học hỏi với vai trò Sales Admin trong suốt 13 tuần, tác giả được tiếp xúc với môi trường kinh doanh thực tế và có một cái nhìn cận cảnh hơn về ngành công nghiệp du lịch Qua những trải nghiệm và kiến thức thực tế, trước hết, bài báo cáo đã trình bày được những thông tin về công ty và bộ phận mà mình làm việc, cụ thể là Bộ phận bán hàng Sau đó, bài báo cáo mô tả sơ lược để có một cái nhìn tổng quan về quy trình bán một sản phẩm du lịch MICE Thêm vào đó, bài báo cáo trình bày chi tiết và cụ thể các nhiệm vụ thực tế mà tác giả đã thực hiện Từ việc học hỏi và phân tích các nhiệm vụ này, bài báo cáo xác định được ưu và khuyết điểm trong việc xây dựng, đào tạo và quản lý đội ngũ Sales Admin của công ty Exotic Việt Nam Cuối cùng, thông qua bài báo cáo, tác giả đưa ra một số giải pháp hữu ích có thể giúp công ty cải thiện thực trạng trên

Kết lại, quá trình thực tập tại công ty Exotic Vietnam là khoảng thời gian quý báu, quá trình này tạo cơ hội cho tác giả học hỏi để trau dồi thêm kiến thức và kĩ năng thực tế, được tiếp xúc với môi trường và áp lực công việc thật sự để trải nghiệm cảm giác không ngừng phấn đầu để đạt mục tiêu đã đề ra Và quan trong nhất, những kiến thức từ quá trình thực tập cung cấp cho tác giả những thông tin và dữ liệu giá trị để hoàn thành bài báo cáo tốt nghiệp

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE REPORT 1

1.1 Reasons for the report 1

1.2 Purposes of the report 2

CHAPTER 2 EXOTIC VIETNAM?S BACKGROUND 4

2.1 History and development 4

2.2 Lines of Products 5

2.3 Competition 6

2.4 Vision and missions 6

CHAPTER 3 EXOTIC VIETNAM?S SALES DEPARTMENT 8

3.1 Duties and responsibilities 8

3.2 Staffing 9

3.3 Corporate achievements 11

CHAPTER 4 JOB DESCRIPTIONS 14

4.1 Objectives of the internship 14

CHAPTER 5 FINDINGS AND EXPERIENCE 28

5.1 Strengths and weaknesses in managing and training Sales Admin team 28

5.2 Experience 30

5.3 Recommendations for Exotic Vietnam?s Sales Department 31 CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION 34 REFERENCES 35

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 1 Exotic Vietnam's Company Structure 4 Chart 2 Exotic Vietnam's Revenues, Profits and Expenses in 2014 and 2015 11

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE REPORT

1.1 Reasons for the report

In recent years, Vietnam has had lots of companies formed, which gives jobs to thousands of people Each company consists of many departments in it, which requires great collaboration among the members within a department as well as among the departments Therefore, teamwork becomes a trend at the workplace And the best way to create and strengthen teamwork is to organize teambuilding activities Big companies often have their own human resource department or training team to do all this for them However, most of the companies in Vietnam have not paid much attention to holding these activities themselves; instead, they usually buy the services via outsourcing Hence, seeing this as an opportunity, many tourism agencies add teambuilding and other activities including meetings, conferences and events to their tours as a way to attract new customers and to renovate traditional tours These tours are also known as MICE (MICE stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences (or Conventions) and Events (or Exhibitions)), which is a type of tourism in which large groups, usually planned well in advance, are brought together activities for particular purposes MICE tours are very popular in the world and have been introduced in Vietnam in recent years With their practical benefits on improving employment relationship, MICE tours gradually get better recognition, and as a result, they have become the products that tourism agencies give priority in their sales; in addition, nowadays in tourism market, more and more companies specializing in MICE tours have been established And Exotic Vietnam was found in those

MICE tourism is a potential business Revenues earned by it are six-fold more than ones by conventional tourism For that reason, mice tourism market is a battlefield Companies specializing in MICE continuously try their best to find best ways to expand their market shares Exotic Vietnam is just a market follower in this field; therefore, it is now facing lots of competitors including market leaders as Saigon Tourist or Viet Travel and peer competitors as Viet Mark, Dat Viet Tour and many

other agencies On the other hand, as an intern in Exotic Vietnam, with the knowledge the reporter has learnt, she found that different agencies have different ways to sell their tours but the procedures of sales are similar Therefore, the sales force plays an important role in making their company?s products and services more competitive and remarkable than its rivals At Exotic Vietnam, besides Sales Executives, there are also Sales Admins directly joining in the procedure of selling MICE tour This is as well the position that the reporter is in; hence, she wants to present a report on the roles of Sales Admins during a process of selling MICE tours of Exotic Vietnam She believes that it is essential for the company to find out the strengths to promote and the weaknesses in the jobs of Sales Admins to improve for more efficiency in sales activities which are useful tools for the company in the sales competition

Furthermore, as a student majoring in Business English at the University of Finance – Marketing, the reporter studies and has passion for many subjects relevant to sales management and tourism Hence, she decides to make the report on this subject in order to enrich her knowledge and skills on tourism and sale Also, with her findings on the report, she wants to give Exotic Vietnam a thorough review on what it has done with its sales force, especially, its Sales Admin staff Hopefully, the company will find them useful for its future plans to train and manage its sales force which can help develop its business

1.2 Purposes of the report

A well-planned sales process is a significant and helpful tool to generate revenues for a company and implementing it smoothly is more important For that reason, the sales force must be well-prepared on their knowledge and skills Therefore, with the completion of this work, the reporter expects to obtain the following objectives First of all, she will determine the facts on the activities included in Exotic Vietnam?s sales procedure of MICE tours in which the real tasks of Sales Admins will be shown thoroughly Based on the findings, she will point out the strengths and weaknesses of the Sales Admin staff?s performances Then, she will make great efforts to offer some

recommendations useful for Exotic Vietnam in training and managing its Sales Admins staff to reach more effective activities in its future sales strategies for MICE tours Furthermore, from this report and the information learned when doing it, the reporter expects to get much better knowledge and skills on this field Finally, the report is also a tool that the reporter uses to present her duties at the company and the lessons that she has learnt during her internship

CHAPTER 2 EXOTIC VIETNAM’S BACKGROUND

2.1 History and development

The company was established in December 2013 with the legal name <Exotic Vietnam Company Limited= It specializes in tourism, especially MICE tourism The company was founded by a group of dynamic, meticulously trained, well experienced and highly skilled people who have been working in the field of tourism and MICE for years On its very first days, Exotic Vietnam had 15 fixed members organized into five departments including Sales Department, IT & Marketing Department, Operation Department, Teambuilding Service and Human Resource & Accounting Department Besides, there was also a team of collaborators who are ungraduated student working as interns at the company During two years of development, for its best advantages, the company?s structure has been changed a lot However, as it has been only over two years since the company?s foundation, Exotic Vietnam?s structure has not yet been completed At present, the company has 13 fixed members and a team of interns All of them are organized as in the chart below:

General Director

Sales Department

Director of Sales

Sales Executives

Sale Admins

IT & Marketing Department

Director of IT & Marketing

IT & Marketing Executives

Designers

Teambuiding Service

Accounting Department Vice Director

Chart 1 Exotic Vietnam's Company Structure

2.2 Lines of Products

Exotic Vietnam designs tours and provides the travel services for individuals, groups, families, and organizations Its products and services include specific MICE tours, traditional tours and game tools for teambuilding programs

In terms of MICE, Exotic Vietnam offers unique designed tours for business groups and organizations according to their requests and goals that they want to achieve after the tours Exotic Vietnam>s MICE tours usually include some activities such as conferences, meetings and workshops, new-year and year-end parties, anniversaries, opening ceremonies, teambuilding programs, galas, incentives and some other events Furthermore, the company designs some tours that are the combination of MICE and other special tours such as adventure or trekking tours With good expertise in this field, the company gives its customers new and suitable solutions to creating and enforcing teamwork among their employees and departments

Regarding the traditional tours, Exotic Vietnam offers its customers high quality trips which satisfy their desire for interesting journeys as well as relaxing and memorable moments As the company understands the true meaning of travel, it always strives to provide excellent services that meet its customers? demands Some kinds of traditional tours that Exotic Vietnam offers are leisure tours, incentive tours, sightseeing tours, homestay tours, tailor-made tours or school trips

Exotic Vietnam?s products mostly are inbound and domestic MICE tours because the company is still new and small-scale organization However, the company is on its way to develop quickly by building a strong position in the inbound and domestic MICE tourism market to expand its business to organizing outbound and many other kinds of travel

Additionally, for the best teambuilding services, the company invests in having its own game tools for use in its tours as well as for sale and for rent to other consumers With all its products and services, Exotic Vietnam always makes efforts to offer the best tours to its customers

2.3 Competition

Although Exotic Vietnam markets many kinds of tours and travel services, its key products are MICE tours and their related services Therefore, its target customers are the companies in the business sectors In this market segment, the company determines the competitors that have similar products and services of it in order to have suitable sales strategies and prepare strong competence to win in the competitions The rivals that the company often meets in the biddings are Saigon Tourist, Viettravel, Vietmark, XPC, AQL and many others In the competition, instead of trying to beat the competitors, the company makes every effort to continuously perfect its products and services so as to get more customers? trust and gradually build a firm position on the market The company goal is to win customers? long-lasting trust by the high quality and sincere of their products and services they provide That way, it can gain customers? loyalty and retain it as long as possible

2.4 Vision and missions

The company?s vision for its first 5 years is to get more and more trust from customers with their best products and services Moreover, in the next 5 years, the company tries its best to distinguish itself from other competitors by its unique and creative tours and services, which can help it build a strong position in Vietnamese tourism market Exotic Vietnam set the target to be in top 10 of the best and most well-known companies that provide high quality MICE services

To fulfill the vision, Exotic Vietnam puts forward four missions for all members of it as follows: Firstly, the company continuously provides new and creative ideas for its customers to satisfy their requirements Secondly, the company makes every effort to design suitable and interesting games which can stimulate passion and teamwork of the customers and help them achieve the goals of the programs Thirdly, Exotic Vietnam will find ways to expand its business by adding outbound travel to its product lines to enlarge its shares in the tourism market Fourthly, the company tries to build more trust and long-standing relationships with its customers to build their loyalty And finally,

every member in the company themselves ceaselessly improves their knowledge and skills as well as keeps good relationship with each other to enhance effective teamwork in order to fulfill the three above missions

CHAPTER 3 EXOTIC VIETNAM’S SALES DEPARTMENT

3.1 Duties and responsibilities

During the 3-month-internship at Exotic Vietnam, the reporter had time to practice and cultivate her knowledge and skills as a Sales Admin at Sales Department To a new company as Exotic Vietnam, Sales Department plays an important role in generating revenues and maximizing profits in order that the company could maintain and expand its business First of all, to fulfill this mission, Sales Department must clearly understand about the company?s products and services, the state of them in the market and who its rivals are This helps it have properties to assist General Director to build sales strategies and set targets for the company in different periods of time Then, based on what have been put forward, Sales Department has the duties to build particular sales plans to meet the given targets Since Exotic Vietnam still has been in its early years of branding process, its Sales Department cooperates with its IT & Marketing Department to search for prospects and to promote its products and services on the market The company?s main products are MICE tours and travel services Due to the distinctive features of MICE tours, Sales Department is responsible for designing specific schedules with different activities according to customers? requests After considering the situations and preparing everything needed to create suitable products that match customers? needs, the department conducts sales as well as provides services before, during and after the sales These services partly help the company retain its customers and build their loyalty In addition, for more effective sales, Sales Department plays role of a link to build win-win relationships between the company and its suppliers of travel services such as hotels, restaurants and other technical services Moreover, after sales, the department has to save all the tour related documents for later use as business records of the company The department also has to create and submit monthly and annual reports to General Director These reports are means for him to keep track of the company?s business Besides performing its own jobs, Sales Department cooperates with other departments within the company to bring

the best services to customers Collaboration also helps them together achieve the company?s common goals As Exotic Vietnam is still just a small-scale company, it does not have its own Human Resource Department to handle recruitment and training programs For that reason, Sales Department itself takes responsibility to recruit its staff and train them

Tourist industry requires a sales person to always keep good attitude when communicate with customers, frankly consult them as well as use his or her knowledge and experience to share and convince them to buy the services without imposing them To fulfill all above tasks, the staff members must have good will, good communication skill, multi-tasking skill, patience, cleverness, and travel experience These are the abilities that Sales Department?s members try to cultivate constantly to improve themselves for better business results

3.2 Staffing

At present, there are 10 members in Exotic Vietnam?s Sales Department The managers include the Sales Director and two Sales Executives The others are Sales Admins The Sales Director is the leader of Sales Department She is the one who communicates the company?s strategies and targets to the department?s members According to what has been set out, she establishes sales objectives and sales plans by forecasting and developing annual sales quotas and projecting expected sales volume and profit for existing and new products as well Then she has to present the plans in front of the General Director to get his approval and conduct them in consultation with him Moreover, she directs and supervises her staff?s implementation of the plans to ensure that they would get supposed results and meet the sales objectives She also plays role of a consultant for her staff with useful advice and proper directions which help them perform their jobs appropriately And as a part of Sales Department, she carries out the sales in which she creates the tours, deals with suppliers and provides customer services Additionally, the Sales Director assigns the right tasks to right staff and gives them permission to cooperate with other departments in order to provide the best

products and services for the customers She is also responsible for reporting directly to General Director on the progress of sales and performances to achieve the given goals Finally, to enhance the company?s sales force, Sales Director together with Sales Executives develops and conducts recruitment and training programs in order to seek for new employees and improve current ones

Sales Executives play important roles in meeting the sales targets of the department through effective sales Sales Executives are main force conducting sales activities and customer services to maximize the company?s profits under the lead of Sales Director and according the sales plans During the processes of selling tours, Sales Executives tightly supervise the rate of progress for timely actions when something wrong happens Sales Executives have power to delegate tasks to Sales Admins who assist them with sales activities Also, Sales Executives motivate and train Sales Admins at any time for their better performances Not only selling, Sales Executives is responsible for maintaining and improving relationships with the customers and the company?s suppliers as well Besides, Sales Executives produce and submit regular progress reports to Sales Director in order to present the real state of the performances to achieve the common goals They also maintain necessary data and records for future reference Playing roles as implementers of the sales, Sales Executives know clearly about the accomplishments and shortcomings of each tour; hence, they have competence to analyze the state of affairs and offer suggestions to better the company?s Sales plans

In the past, Exotic Vietnam had a division called Operation Department, whose staff was responsible for operating tours and assisting Sales Department with travel services However, for convenient and effective sales, the company removed the department and then added Sales Admin Team as direct assistants of Sales Executives Sales Admins are all interns who are learning and practicing to enrich their knowledge and skill in order to have chance to become official Sales Executives of the company During their internship, they will be trained and taught sales techniques as well as skills for the best customer services On the other hand, they assist Sales Director and Sales Executives

with sales activities In particular, they check the outsourcing services needed for the tours such as accommodation, food and beverage, transportation, and some other event services In addition, Sales Admins participate in the preparation stage before the tours, join the tours and events to learn about and have a hand in activities during the time they take place, and accomplish post-tour tasks When Sales Admin have enough knowledge and skills needed, they have chance to design tours for customers and practice making quotation If a Sales Admin?s competence is approved by the Sales Director, he or she may have chance to sell his or her first tour

Being a trainee at Sales Department of Exotic Vietnam, the reporter finds it interesting and satisfied as she has opportunities to get more knowledge, skills and especially a lot of experiences in her favorite field Hopefully, the time practicing there will help the reporter determine her interest and suitable jobs for her in the future

About the revenues, since the company only publicizes the results of annual revenues, the reporter can only provide the following information according to the collected data shown in the chart above First, in 2 years, from 2014 to 2015, the number of contracts increased from 39 to 60 The revenues also increased from VND 4,920,135,000 to VND 12,523,362,274 As a result on tours profits also increased from VND 1,146,020,000 to VND 2,235,429,920 This proves that in 2015 after the company?s structure was changed, the Sales Department has worked more effectively However, due to the increasing expenses to maintain the company?s business such as the cost of renting premises, the cost of employee salaries, the cost of the investment in game tools, costumes, uniforms and stationeries, after calculating all the financial issues, the company still lost VND 992,980,000 in 2014 and VND 438,831,880 in 2015 However, while the revenues raised 2.5 times and the profits was almost doubled, the expenses insignificantly increased by only 0.25 times Such results were partly thanks to the change in the company?s structure In particular, the company removed the Operation Department and reduced some employees of some other divisions including the Sales Department Additionally, it added the Sales Admin positions and gave them the missions of supporting the Sales Executives with the sales procedure and doubling as operators As Sales Admins are mostly interns, their salaries are not as much as the official employees? Therefore, the company has been able to save a significant amount of costs Thanks to that, even though the company did not have any profit in 2015, that its losses fell more than a half is encouraging for a two-year startup company

However, every business needs profits to survive Hence, based on what have been done in 2015, the company has set the target to achieve better profits in 2016 Concretely, it has planned to double the revenues in order to remain a certain amount of net profits after paying for all the expenses To reach the target, within the year, the company must sell about 112 tours with the profits of VND 20,000,000 each tour, which means the Sales Department must have about 9 successful sales per month Actually, by the end of March, it has gotten 16 tours well operated Consequently, in the rest of the year, to achieve the goal, the sales force have to make every effort to

sell 96 tours more or raise the profits on each tour to reduce quantity of the must-sell tours

Though Exotic Vietnam has not yet thrived and brought huge profits, its rise in revenues and the increasing amount of customers through the past year raise in the Sales staff the passion to work harder and the desire to help the company build a strong position in Vietnamese MICE tourism market