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A. Tansu Barker: Faculty of Business, Brock University, St Catharine's, Ontario, Canada
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: Permission by Dr David Cravens to use the survey is gratefully acknowledged.
Introduction
The rising cost of maintaining a salesforce has been a concern for most sales managers in today's increasingly competitive markets. In many industrial firms, direct selling costs account for almost half of all marketing expenses (Ryans and Weinberg, 1981). Often, the cost of maintaining the salesforce is greater than advertising and promotion costs and exceeds 14 per cent of a typical firm's revenues (O'Connell and Keenan, 1990). The median cost of a business-to-business call is around $250 in the USA. (Anderson and Rosenbloom, 1992). Therefore, sales managers have the crucial responsibility to make sure that their salesforces contribute to the organization's objectives effectively and efficiently. The current economic environment has prompted significant cost savings especially in manufacturing and has led to demands for more accountability. In turn, there have been calls for evaluating the contribution of the marketing function to the firm. Within the marketing department, sales managers are becoming increasingly concerned about justifying their investment and are facing stiff competition against each other in competing for scarce resources, such as additional salespeople. Yet, an area that has received relatively little attention is the activities and perceptions of field sales managers. As Bagozzi (1980) has pointed out, very little is known about those who manage salespeople, even though field managers represent an important link between salespeople and senior management. Field sales managers (FSMs) are an important link within the firm since they help translate sales and marketing strategy into implementation, co-ordinate these activities, monitor and evaluate performance, motivate salespeople and reward them. Therefore, studies that investigate the activities and attitudes of FSMs can provide senior sales managers (SSEs) with important insights and contribute towards filling an important gap in the literature.
Objectives of the study
The purpose of this study is to examine the importance of selected factors in improving the overall effectiveness of the sales organization as reported by senior sales executives (SSEs) and first level FSMs. Identification of the factors that have an impact on overall effectiveness can serve as a benchmark against which firms can compare and evaluate their own criteria. Establishing benchmarks is important both...