【正文】 nal agents are lower than a pany sales force because there is less administrative overhead involved and also because manufacturers39。 reps do not receive a salary or reimbursement for field selling expenses.However, costs of using agents tend to rise faster as sales volume increases because agents usually receive higher missions than pany sales people.Consequently, there is a breakeven level of sales volume below which the costs of external agents is lower, but above which a pany sales force bees more efficient.Example:A pany is faced with a planning decision of whether to use a pany sales force or outside agents. It estimates that salaries and expenses will amount to $30,000 per sales person and that the pany will require 10 sales people to cover the territory. Furthermore, the sales people will receive a 5% mission on the dollar volume that they sell. If the pany decided to use outside agents however, it would have to pay a fixed 15% mission on the dollar volume that they sell. Determine when the pany should use agents and when it should use a pany sales force? 2. CONTROL AND STRATEGIC CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING IF A COMPANY SALES FORCE SHOULD BE USEDManagers argue that internal sales forces are preferable to agents because agents are more difficult to control.Agents can be viewed as independent actors who are expected to act opportunistically in pursuit of their own shortrun objectives (., sales).This makes agents reluctant to pursue new accounts or smaller customers as well as perform service and support activities.19 / 50On the other hand, managers can control their own sales force in many ways: selection training supervision operating procedures reward mechanisms etc.Furthermore, monitoring performance of a pany salesforce is easier than with independent agents if performance is based on anything more than dollar sales volume.3. HORIZONTAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES anization The assignment of individual sales people to separate geographic territories.Strengths:1. Low cost. of confusion concerning who the customer should talk to if problems arise.Weakness: not provide any benefits from the division and specialization of labor. Organization Separate sales forces for each product (or related group of products) in their product assortment.Strengths: with products and methods of selling those products. cooperation between sales and production. sales management to control the selling effort across the pany39。s various products.Weakness: of effort. selling expenses and administrative costs. among the firm39。s customers.20 / 50 Organization Organizing the sales force by customer type.Strengths: understanding of customer needs. to train for different selling approaches for different markets. for new products. to control selling effort across different markets.Disadvantages: of effort. selling and overhead expenses. by Selling Function such as having one sales force specializing in prospecting for and developing new accounts while a second sales force maintains and services existing customers. to service national and key accounts. on regular sales force members. Advantage: additional administrative or selling expense. Disadvantage: accounts often require more detailed and sophisticated treatment than smaller customers.2. Assign key accounts to sales executives.Advantage: customers are serviced by people high in the anization who have authority to make important decisions.Disadvantage: sometimes allocate too much of the firm39。s resources to their own accounts to the detriment of smaller, but still profitable customers. selling tasks to managers takes time away from their management activities.21 / 50 separate key account division.Advantage:a. Allows for the close integration of functional areas.Disadvantage:a. Duplication of effort.b. Tremendous additional expense.. separate sales force for major accounts.Advantages: managers can bee familiar with their customers needs and provide a high level of service to them. firm can select its most petent sales people to bee members of the national account sales force. an internal benefit to the selling pany (., motivation mechanism).Disadvantages: to those for customer type anization. 22 / 50CHAPTER 8 ALLOCATING SELLING EFFORT AND DESIGNING SALES TERRITORIESI. Sales Force SizeThree methods are widely used to calculate the size of the sales force: Breakdown Method Workload Method Incremental Method Method the simplest way to calculate the optimal sales force size.Assumes that all sales people have the potential to produce the same amount of sales in one year. The estimated productivity for one sales person is divided into the pany39。s forecasted sales to determine how many sales reps are needed. Example:A firm forecasts total sales of $10 million for the ing year. If each sales person is capable of producing $250,000 in sales per year, how many sales people will be required? Number required = Forecasted Sales Productivity per sales person= $10,000,000 / $250,000/sales rep= 40 sales repsAdvantages: 1. Simple. Disadvantages:1. No allowance for sales person turnover.2. Assumes each sales rep has equal productivity.3. Uses reverse logic. sales rather than profits as the desired end result. Workload Method is based on an equal workload for all sales people.To find the number of sales people needed, management determines the amount of work it takes to cover the target market. It then divides this estimate by the workload the 23 / 50average sales person can manage. The workload method consists of the following steps:(1)Classify customers and prospects into groups according to the amount of work required to service that group (usually based on sales volume). Example:Type of Sales Number ofA