312 CHAPTER16 MANAGING THESALESFORCE
In line with this strategy, Fisher and Ury offer this advice about negotiation tac-
tics: If the other party is more powerful, the best tactic is to know one’s BATNA—Best
Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. By identifying the alternatives if a settlement is
not reached, the company sets a standard against which any offer can be measured.
Knowing its BATNA protects the company from being pressured into accepting unfa-
vorable terms from a more powerful opponent.
What should a firm’s negotiators do when the other side uses a take-it-or-leave-it
tactic or seats them with the sun in their eyes? The firm’s negotiators should recognize
the tactic, raise the issue explicitly, and question the tactic’s legitimacy and desirabil-
ity—in other words, negotiate over it. If negotiating fails, the company should resort to
its BATNA and terminate the negotiation until the other side ceases to employ these
tactics. Meeting such tactics with defending principles is more productive than coun-
terattacking with tricky tactics.Relationship Marketing
The principles of personal selling and negotiation thus far described are transaction-
orientedbecause their purpose is to close a specific sale. However, in many cases, the
company is not seeking an immediate sale but rather to build a long-term supplier-
customer relationshipby demonstrating that it has the capabilities to serve the account’s
needs in a superior way over the long run.
More companies today are therefore emphasizing relationship marketingrather
than transaction marketing, as discussed in Chapter 1. This has come about because
larger customers are often global and prefer suppliers that can (1) sell and deliver a
coordinated set of products and services to many locations; (2) quickly solve problems
that arise in different locations; and (3) work closely with customer teams to improve
products and processes.
However, some suppliers are still not set up to meet these requirements; their
products are sold by separate sales forces that do not work together easily, and their
technical people may not be willing to spend time to educate a customer. To succeed
in winning and maintaining accounts in today’s demanding environment, firms must
encourage sales teamwork and reward it with appropriate compensation for work on
shared accounts. They also need to establish better goals and measures for their sales
force and reinforce the importance of teamwork in their training programs, even
while honoring individual initiative.^32
When a relationship management program is properly implemented through-
out the organization—coordinating company efforts in marketing and sales and
beyond—the organization will begin to focus as much on managing its customers as
on managing its products. At the same time, smart companies realize that while there
is a strong and warranted move toward relationship marketing, it is not effective in all
situations. Ultimately, companies must judge which specific segments and customers
will respond profitably to relationship management.EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Salespeople—the company’s link to its customers—perform one or more of these
tasks: prospecting, targeting, communicating, selling, servicing, information gather-
ing, and allocating. Designing the sales force requires making decisions regarding
objectives, strategy, structure, size, and compensation. Determining objectives and
strategy requires defining the specific objectives the sales force will achieve and select-
ing the approaches and type of sales force that will be most effective.