Page 163 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

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For companies that sell a myriad of products in numerous markets, or for companies that manufacture products highly technical in nature, a product sales force (PSF) structure is more appropriate. This structure entails dividing the sales force along the product- line or a portion of the product-line, in effect transforming the salesperson into a product specialist. Specialization allows the salesperson to develop a fluency with the product’s benefits, which is articulated to customers.
A second advantage of becoming a product specialist is that because the salesperson understands all of the technical benefits and limitations of the product, he or she can quickly spot unmet customer needs and wants and suggest solutions. Sales forces that work like this include many in the high-tech industry and many B2B sales forces. The in-depth knowledge of a particular product and associated application is quite powerful.
Though the product sales force structure overcomes the inherent disadvantages of employing a territorial sales force structure, there are intrinsic problems. First, creating an army of specialists may actually lead to missed sales opportunities because the specialist is not aware of the benefits offered by other products sold by the business. There is an old saying, ‘if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. One of the advantages of a firm with a broad product-line, like HP or IBM, is that they can argue that they bring the proper tool to solve your problem, because they have a big bag of tools while a smaller firm has only one solution and that is what they will sell. Firms may also miss opportunities for additional sales because of sales myopia which naturally occurs when you are focused on one product. A sales rep who sells to just one customer or one industry gains tremendous knowledge of that firm and/or industry and can often go deep into the firm to find new applications and needs for their own products, effectively stirring up additional business that otherwise would lay dormant. They also can develop in-depth relationships which are extremely helpful when problems occur, as they will in any firm; both sides have invested in the relationship and are more apt to be patient, it is more like a marriage than a blind date.
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