Sales Management Case Study

. Case study 4.1

Sales Management

Samuel Hare

1. I think it is time for them to reconsider how they organization there salesforce. The first thing they should do is organize it by the customer type not by the product line. Why have a large group of sales managers and product managers  dealing with the same issues and products. Each region should sell to each of the customer types due to the fact they would have knowledge on all of there products. It may be more work for them to learn about all the products but its easier then having each salesperson selling thing from each line when some of them over lap such as, Food packaging and institutional both key customers have paper and plastic distributors, grocery chains and grocery delis. It would make more sense for them to reorganize towards customer type instead of product line.  The should use the market sale organization for there sales-force.

This as explained on pg 86 would be a better way for them to organize there sales force. This method is when salespeople are assigned to customer types and required to meet every need of the customer. This method helps salespeople understand how the customer buys and uses their products.

2. Some of the advantages that come along with organizing by product line would be that the sales management teams are able to control and keep track of how the selling efforts are going within the product lines. It also allows the product sales organization to use line positions meaning positions are included in the direct top management positions.(pg81)  Along with the advantages comes along with disadvantages including, multiple   salespeople doing the same job, one of the main problems was that it was difficult for the grocery store and paper and plastic company's to be able to get a hold of anyone from the sales team.

3.  I think that it would benefit them if they developed a market sales organization strategy in the western region, this as i stated earlier would allow them to pay closer detail to how their customers use and purchase their products.  IPI has a higher number of customer types then they do product lines.

This would mean they need more salespeople only because of the size of there distributors, disadvantage of this would be it would cost the company more. The big advantage if they use a market strategy and organize by customer type  in the western region would be, that  they would have fewer salesmen. With this the salespeople might be more under pressure to please the customer since there are more customer types and less salesmen.