Principles of Marketing, 17/e

Managing the Sales Force

Author Comment

Here’s another definition of sales force management: “planning, organizing, leading, and controlling personal contact programs designed to achieve profitable customer relationships.” Once again, the goal of every marketing activity is to create customer value, engage customers, and build profitable customer relationships.

We define sales force management as analyzing, planning, implementing, and controlling sales force activities. It includes designing sales force strategy and structure as well as recruiting, selecting, training, compensating, supervising, and evaluating the firm’s salespeople. These major sales force management decisions are shown in Figure 16.1 and discussed in the following sections. ...