This paper discusses how businesses should design a sales force and how managers can effectively manage that sales force.
Designing and Managing a Sales Force
Introduction
U.S. businesses spend over $140 billion annually on personal selling (Anderson, 1995 and Dalrymple, 1994). This is more than they spend on any other promotional method. Furthermore, over 11 million Americans are employed in sales and related occupations (Anderson, 1995 and Dalrymple, 1994). Sales forces are found throughout the business environment from the insurance industry to college
recruiting -- and just about everything in between.
According to author Philip Kotler, sales personnel serve as the company's personal link to its customers (p. 620). Kotler asserts that "the sales representative is the company to many of its customers" since it is the salesperson who delivers information to the customer (p. 620). Therefore, a company must carefully consider how to design and manage its sales force in order to be successful in the marketplace.
English: Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Manag...
English: Sales representatives in front of V. Ivor...
English: handwritten autograph of Philip Kotler as...This paper discusses how businesses should design a sales force and how managers can effectively manage that sales force.
Designing a Sales force
When designing a sales force, a company must thoroughly deliberate several issues in order to establish an efficient sales system. These issues are: the development of sales force objectives, strategy, structure, and compensation of the sales force (Kotler, p. 620).
Sales force objectives are the specific goals that companies expect their sales representatives to achieve (Kotler, p. 620). A typical example of how companies delineate an objective is the establishment of sales quotas for their sales representatives. Sales quotas inform a salesperson of exactly what their objective should be for a given period of time.
Additionally, besides quotas, there are other ways of delineating sales objectives. For example, objectives commonly defined by companies in addition to quotas are:...