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Personified Promotion
TERRITORIAL STRUCTURED SALES FORCE: in this type of sales organization, each sales
representative is given an exclusive territory in which to represent the company’s full line. The advantages
of this structure are:
- It results in a clear definition of the salesperson’s responsibilities. He or she bears the credit
or blame for area sales for the extent that personnel selling efforts makes a difference. This
tends to encourage a high level of effort, especially when management is able to gauge fairly
accurately the area’s sales potential. - Responsibility for a definite territory increases the sales representative’s incentive to
cultivate local business and personal ties. These ties tend to improve the quality of the
sales representatives selling effectiveness and personal life. - Travel expenses are likely to be relatively small, since each sales representative’s travel takes
place within the bounds of a small geographical territory.
The territorial form of sales organization works quite well in companies that have a relatively homogenous
set of products and customers. When products and markets become diversified, this form of sales force
organization becomes increasingly less effective.
PRODUCT STRUCTURED SALES FORCE: the importance of sales representatives knowing their
products, together with the development of product divisions and management, has led many companies
to structure their sales force along product lines. Specialization of the sales force by product is particularly
warranted where the products are technically complex, highly unrelated and very numerous. A major
disadvantage can occur in a situation where the same firm buys all the company’s products; it means
that the same customer would be visited by various salespersons from the same selling firm. The selling
firm’s representatives will travel over the same routes, and each uses up valuable time waiting in the outer
office to see the customer’s purchasing agents. These extra costs must be weighed against the benefits that
may result from the higher level of customer service and more knowledgeable product representation.
CUSTOMER STRUCTURED SALES FORCE: firms often specialize their sales forces along customer
lines. Separate sales force may be set up for different industries, for major versus regular accounts and for
current versus new business development. The advantage of this structure of customer specialization is that
each sales force can become more knowledgeable about specific customer needs. The major disadvantage
of customer structured sales force arises if the various types of customer’s are scattered evenly throughout
the country. This means an overlapping coverage of territories, which is always more expensive.