366 The Marketing Book
Sales management issues
Sales management must also adapt to changes
in market conditions. The need for closer, more
demanding relationships with selected custom-
ers brings new problems and opportunities in
the organization and deployment of sales-
people. Traditional approaches to determining
salesforce size, territory deployment and call
patterns can be brought into question. As a
result, salesforce size may need to be assessed
on an estimate of the future revenue stream
expected from a customer and the service that
customer will require. Call rates, travel patterns
and frequency of visits may change. In some
cases, companies may have permanent staff on
their customers’ premises. Marketing orienta-
tion would suggest such customer-based sales
solutions to be appropriate, but the cost effect-
iveness of sales operations may need to be even
more carefully assessed than in the past.
Similarly, traditional means of setting sales
targets on sales volume and revenue may need
to be replaced by measures which reflect the
new customer relationship job to be done. More
appropriate targets are likely to be the retention
rate of customers, the contribution these cus-
tomers make and the satisfaction level they
have in doing business with the firm. This is in
keeping with a customer-focused, quality-
based strategy that leading-edge firms pursue.
This has implications for the kind of people to
be recruited, who need to be relationship
orientated, financially aware, marketing
trained, computer literate and skilled negotia-
tors. Individual ability and technique will still
be important, but this must be coupled with
sound management, particularly in the areas of
recruitment, training, leadership, remuneration
and control. These issues are considered in the
following sections.
Recruitment and selection
Recruiting and selecting suitable applicants is
one of the most important and difficult jobs the
sales manager can undertake. Formally
addressing the recruitment process will help in
defining the job, attracting the most suitable
applicants, and avoiding unnecessary problems
and costs. The time and expense in recruiting is
not insignificant, including advertising, selec-
tion procedures, and first and second inter-
views. Add to this other costs, including
induction training, the potential cost of lost
sales, the costs of dismissal if the wrong
applicant is selected and the cost of repeating
the process. Recruitment costs can be a major
headache for sales managers, as well as for the
recruits themselves.
To overcome some of these difficulties,
recruitment should be seen as part of a process
which includes job analysis, manpower plan-
ning, job description, job specification, recruit-
ment, screening and selection. This process
should be systematic and thorough, and a
planned approach will increase the success rate
in selection, build a reputation as a desirable,
progressive employer and sharpen the firm’s
competitive edge, thus improving effectiveness
and efficiency in sales operations. The starting
point in recruitment is job analysis. Job analysis
specifies the tasks involved in a particular job
and the factors which affect job performance,
including the reporting relationship, the role
and tasks necessary to perform effectively, the
environment in which the job operates, includ-
ing policies on sales, distribution and com-
petitors, and company rules and regulations.
Sales managers should be careful not to be too
intuitive in their job analysis. Of course, the job
should reflect corporate ethos, marketing strat-
egy and the specific reporting relationships, but
job analysis also requires assessment of what
existing salespeople do.
The second stage is manpower planning,
which has both qualitative and quantitative
dimensions. Initially, an assessment should be
made as to how adequate and effective the
current salesforce is in meeting sales objectives.
What characteristics are considered necessary
to do the particular selling job? These are the
knowledge, skills and abilities an individual