Creating the Sales Force

We are talking Sales management. We talked setting personal selling objectives, formulation sales policies, Structuring the sales force, Deciding the size of the sales force, Designing sales territories, Developing the sales forecasts and sales budgets, fixing sales quotas/targets. We talked on each of the above mentions errands involved in sales management. Today we will talk on creating the sales force.


Creation of the right kind and the right number of sales personnel is an important responsibility of sales management. Recruiting sources need identifying, both those internal to the company and those external to it. The process of creation of sales personnel involves the following activities.

• Recruitment
• Selection
• Induction/orientation

Recruitment:
Recruiting sales personnel is an important part of implementing personal selling strategy but it is not all that is involved. Team selection or recruiting sales personnel is very important task. Sales personnel are going to work in the field and going to give business. If we consider over all sales management, than recruitment of sales personnel is key part of that.

Incremental Method - Sales Force Management Software

Sales Force Management we are talking here with reference to Sales Force Automation. We talked Workload Method, Sales Potential in previous posts as part of agency management system.

Today we are going to talk about Incremental Method as tool deciding the size of the sales force.

Incremental Method:
The incremental method is the best approach to determine sales force size. It is based on one proposition that net profit will increase when additional sales personnel are added if the incremental sales revenues exceed the incremental costs incurred. To apply this method as organization need two important items of information namely:

• Incremental revenue.
• Incremental costs.

Though this method is conceptually correct, it s also the most difficult to apply. It requires lot of efforts from the organization side to develop a sales response function to use in approximating market behavior in relation to alternative levels of personal selling efforts, and one need to have an efficient research and information team in the organization.

ref: sales force management software, agency management system

Workload Method - Sales Force

Sales Force Management we are talking here. In my last talk we talk about Structuring Sales Force. Before that We talked Sales Force Automation, Sales Policies Formulation, Product Polices, Distribution Policies and Pricing Policies.

Today we continue our talk on Sales Force Management and we talk about deciding the size of the Sales Force Team. There are 3 basic approaches used in approximating sales force size.

• Workload Method
• Sales Potential Method
• Incremental Method

We talk here Workload Method.
According to this method the basic assumption is that all sales personnel should shoulder equal workloads. Management estimates the total workload involved in covering entire companies market and divides by the workload that an individual sales person should be able to handle, thus determining total number of sales people required. The companies applying this approach generally assume that the interactions of three major factors – customer size, sales volume potential and travel load – then determine the workload involved in covering the entire market.

ref: Sales Force Automation & Lead Organizer Software