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of interest. Did Arthur Andersen’s auditors knowingly overlook the warning signs in order to ensure their company still received those lucrative consulting contracts? We’ll never know for certain. The Supreme Court of the United States has since cleared Arthur Andersen of any wrongdoing in the collapse of Enron. However, the price paid for even being associated with the scandal was significant, if not fatal: at one point the company employed 85,000 worldwide. It’s now about 200 people, mostly lawyers who are busy dealing with the other 100 or more civil suits that are still pending.
HyBRiD saLes foRce
For companies that sell a wide range of products over a wide geographical region to many customers strictly employing one of the sales force models places unnecessary restriction on the company. As such, companies often employ a hybrid structure to offset some of the more glaring disadvantages. This approach is often used on a global basis where you will organize the sales force in different ways in different countries depending on the maturity of the market, the length of time you have been in the market and how competitors do business in that country. This is less of a problem than you might think if your customer buys primarily in the country they are headquartered in, which is true for many firms. However, if your customers are global multinationals and buy on a global basis this may require that you have a global account manager whose responsibilities cut across countries; this leads to territorial disputes and other assorted joys but an increasing number of customer are demanding it, more on this later on the chapter on international and global marketing. No matter which model is chosen, there will always be disadvantages since each company’s needs are different. Therefore, each company should select a structure that fits with their overall marketing strategy and where the salesperson’s duties are clearly defined.
SALES FORCE SIzE
Having chosen the appropriate structure, the next step is to esti- mate the size of the sales force. One method is to use a workload approach to set the sales force size. With this approach, a company