Page 531 - Foundations of Marketing

498 Part 6 | Promotion Decisions

and geographical shape should also help the sales force provide the best possible customer
coverage and minimize selling costs. Customer density and distribution are important factors.
The geographic size and shape of a sales territory are the most important factors affecting
the routing and scheduling of sales calls. Next in importance is the number and distribution
of customers within the territory, followed by sales call frequency and duration. Those in
charge of routing and scheduling must consider the sequence in which customers are called
on, specific roads or transportation schedules to be used, number of calls to be made in a
given period, and time of day the calls will occur. In some firms, salespeople plan their own
routes and schedules with little or no assistance from the sales manager. In others, the sales
manager maintains significant responsibility. No matter who plans the routing and scheduling,
the major goals should be to minimize salespeople’s nonselling time (time spent traveling and
waiting) and maximize their selling time. Sales managers should try to achieve these goals so
that a salesperson’s travel and lodging costs are held to a minimum.

Controlling and Evaluating Sales Force
Performance
To control and evaluate sales force performance properly, sales management needs informa-
tion. A sales manager cannot observe the field sales force daily and, thus, relies on sales-
people’s call reports, customer feedback, contracts, and invoices. Call reports identify the
customers called on and present detailed information about interactions with those clients.
Sales personnel must often file work schedules indicating where they plan to be during specific
time periods. Data about a salesperson’s interactions with
customers and prospects can be included in the company’s
customer relationship management system. This informa-
tion provides insights about the salesperson’s performance.
Companies such as SAS provide analytical capabilities that
use data to find the best opportunities and to deploy sales
force resources to achieve optimal cross-business impact.
SAS uses Russian nesting dolls in its advertising to illus-
trate that sometimes the most interesting findings are hidden
underneath the data.
Dimensions used to measure a salesperson’s perfor-
mance are determined largely by sales objectives, normally
set by the sales manager. If an individual’s sales objective is
stated in terms of sales volume, that person should be evalu-
ated on the basis of sales volume generated. Even if a sales-
person is assigned a major objective, he or she is ordinarily
expected to achieve several related objectives as well. Thus,
salespeople are often judged along several dimensions. Sales
managers evaluate many performance indicators, including
average number of calls per day, average sales per customer,
actual sales relative to sales potential, number of new-cus-
tomer orders, average cost per call, and average gross profit
per customer.
To evaluate a salesperson, a sales manager may compare
Courtesy of SAS Institute formance standards. However, sales managers commonly
one or more of these dimensions with predetermined per-

compare a salesperson’s performance with that of other
employees operating under similar selling conditions or the

Sometimes, management judges factors that have less direct
Evaluating Sales Performance salesperson’s current performance with past performance.
SAS provides analytics to uncover profit potential in every bearing on sales performance, such as personal appearance,
customer to facilitate the evaluation of sales performance. product knowledge, and ethical standards. One concern

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