The Sales Organization

Effective sales executives insist upon sound organization. They recognize that the sales organization must achieve both qualitative and quantitative personal selling objectives. Over the long haul, it must achieve qualitative objectives those concerning personal selling’s expected contributions to achievement of overall company objectives. In the short run, it must attain the quantitative personal selling objectives not only sales volume but other objectives related to “profit” (such as keeping selling expenses within certain limits) and to “competitive position” (such as attaining given market shares). Achieving short run quantitative personal selling objectives precedes attainment of the long run qualitative personal selling objectives. The effective sales executive looks upon the sales organization both with respect to the “here and now” and to the “future.” But the sales organization makes its major contribution in the present and the near term recognizing this, the effective sales executive builds both sales mindedness and profit mindedness into the sales organization.

Existence of a sales organization implies the existence of patterns of relationships among subgroups and individuals established for purposes of facilitating accomplishment of the group’s aims.

Organizational defects often trace to lack of attention given to sales organization during the early existence of a company. When setting up a business, management is more concerned with financing and non marketing problems. Executives of new enterprises consider organization questions, but most often these relate to non marketing activities. In manufacturing, for example, as products are improved, production quantities increased, new products added, and production processes developed, the manufacturing organization is adapted to changed situations. Similar alterations in the sales organization are frequently neglected or postponed.

Sales organizations in many companies evolved without regard for changing conditions. The basic setup designed when the company was new remains, despite, for example, changes in selling style and size of sales force. The sales organization, after all, is the vehicle through which personal selling strategy is implemented. A well designed sales organization, like a well designed automobile, accomplishes more, and more economically, than does one that is an” artifact.

The sales organization should be adjusted to fit ideally, to anticipate changing situations. Shifts in marketing, in competition, and in other business factors call for changes in the sales organization. The ideal sales organization has a built in adaptability allowing it to respond appropriately in fluid and diverse marketing environments.