Marketing Management, 16th Edition

Evaluating the Sales Force

We have been describing the feed-forward aspects of sales supervision—how management communicates what the sales reps should be doing and motivates them to do it. But good feed-forward requires good feedback, which means getting regular information about reps to evaluate their performance.

An important source of information about reps is sales reports. Additional information comes through personal observation, salesperson self-reports, customer letters and complaints, customer surveys, and conversations with other reps.

Sales reports are divided between activity plans and write-ups of activity results. The best example of the former is the salesperson’s work plan, which reps submit a week or month in advance to describe ...