MAnaging Sales Force- Part 1

Sales Force Management: Part 1

Sales force management is the analysis, planning, implementation, and control of sales force activities. It includes designing sales force strategy and structure, recruiting, selecting, training, compensating, supervising, and evaluating the firms’ salespeople.

Designing the Sales Force Strategy and Structure

Sales Force Structure

Sales force structures are of three types:

# Territorial sales force structure:

A sales force organisation that assigns each salesperson to an exclusive geographic territory in which that salesperson is to sell the company’s full line.

# Product sales force structure:

A sales force organisation under which salespeople specialise in selling only a portion of the company’s products or lines.

# Customer sales force structure:

A sales force organisation under which sales people specialise in selling only to certain customers or industries.

Sales Force Size

An approach to setting sales force size in which the company groups accounts into different size classes and then determines how many salespeople are needed to call on them, and how many times, to sell the desired number of items.

Sales Force Strategy and Structure Issues

Sales management must also decide who will be involved in the selling effort and how various sales and sales support people will work together.

1. Outside sales force: Outside salespeople who travel to call on customers.

2. Inside sales force: Inside salespeople who conduct business from their offices via telephone or visits from prospective buyers.

3. Telemarketing: Using the telephone to directly sell to the customers.

4. Team Selling: Using teams of people from sales, marketing, engineering, finance, technical support, and even upper management to service large, complex accounts.

CHeers

Archna

Dear Archana, Nice article, I am in the process of overhauling my organization. I was wondering if you would be willing to help me. Please let me know. Thanks, Gaurav