When a salesperson plans organizes and executes activities that increase sales and profits in a given sales territory he or she functions as a n?

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  • Managing vs. Doing
  • Analyzing the Job
  • What are the elements?
  • Concept of Managing
  • Helpful classifications
  • Suggested answers
  • Awareness of managing
  • Teaching Managing
  • Bars to progress
  • Conclusion
  • What is a territory sales plan?
  • What is the function of sales management?
  • What are the steps in sales territory design?
  • What are the types of sales management?

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• The department head of a major corporation recently told me: “The division head to whom I report can talk for hours about modern concepts of managing, and it sounds like chapter and verse from a dissertation about how to be a modern executive. But almost as soon as he gets back to his operating responsibilities, he seems like a different man. In my area of responsibility, for example, he gets unduly engrossed in the very problems he says he expects me and my people to handle.”

• A staff marketing manager had just completed discussing the modern concepts of managing to which he said he subscribes when the phone rang. It was a customer with a complaint which line sales should have handled. Yet the marketing manager assumed undue responsibility for the matter, apparently without realizing that he was violating one of his avowed precepts of managing.

• A field sales manager with whom I met several times proudly proclaimed the progress he was making in developing his salesmen. Yet my meetings with this sales manager were interrupted repeatedly by his salesmen, most of them asking for solutions to fairly routine sales problems. It was apparent that the salesmen brought such problems to him only because they had learned that he wanted them to do so. I do not recall a single instance where the sales manager asked any of the salesmen to suggest a solution.

Managing vs. Doing

Anyone who attempts to examine the difference between the theory and the practice of managing can find hundreds of similar examples throughout his business environment. Why is this so? Companies try to instill the management point of view in their executives by:

• Hiring graduates from the top-rated business schools.

• Putting managers through their own management development programs.

• Sending their managers to management courses and seminars.

• Encouraging their managers to read and study modern methods of managing.

The inherent assumption in such actions is that if managers are exposed to many and varied approaches to effective managing, they will be able to translate what they see and hear for application to their particular jobs.

The fact is that most practicing managers have relatively little time to study managing. And when they do study the subject in any depth, most find it is complicated and elusive. Either the subject is treated with far more semantic sophistication than they can realistically apply, or it has a ring of academic gobbledygook. The result: most managers find, perhaps subconsciously, that they are managing by doing. They are excelling in the very skills that earned most of them their jobs as managers, i.e., solving nonmanaging, technical problems!

Almost any manager today can talk the language of managing in terms such as planning, directing, and controlling. But the test of being an effective manager is really to understand managing well enough to practice it in day-to-day responsibilities.

Analyzing the Job

Today’s sales manager often exemplifies this problem of managing by doing. Let us look briefly at the sales manager’s job and training in order to better appreciate the problem. The effectiveness of the marketing effort in many companies is dependent on the sales manager and his ability to get results through his sales personnel. The difference between a capable sales manager and a not-so-capable sales manager can make a significant difference in sales, profits, and whether or not the cost of a marketing program pays off. In such instances, sales managers are responsible for hiring, training, motivating, and directing the sales personnel, who in turn persuade customers to buy. This latter job of persuading customers is a challenging one and is the ultimate payoff for the salesman and the company. Usually it is also a job that the sales manager learned to do well before becoming a manager. As a result, most sales managers sell—what they like to do and do well—when they should manage. Indeed many think they are managing when they are in fact selling—often duplicating the efforts of their salesmen—or performing some other nonmanaging activity.

Every sales manager has certain nonmanaging activities which he alone must perform. But how much is he contributing to the marketing effort when he spends his time unnecessarily on non-managing activities instead of on managing which would enable him to multiply his efforts many times through his people?

Most companies today spend a great deal of money to train their sales personnel. Yet many of these same companies appear to expect their sales managers to learn their jobs by osmosis. Or if they provide organized training for their sales managers, it is restricted largely to company procedures such as hiring, forecasting, and budgeting, or to increasing functional knowledge of marketing, personnel, accounting, engineering, production, or the like. A sales manager must certainly understand the necessary procedures which he is expected to follow well as the additional functional knowledge which will generally help him technically or provide him with a broader perspective. But the training which is usually neglected is a clear concept of what constitutes managing, so that the sales manager can best apply the procedures or utilize the increased functional knowledge in order to multiply and maximize his efforts through the individuals in his department.

What are the elements?

Even though managers understand many aspects of managing, they have trouble distinguishing the elements of managing from those of nonmanaging activities in their actual day-to-day activities. Our experience indicates that most sales managers have difficulty deciding which activities are managing, and which are nonmanaging or “doing.” For example, which of the following activities would you say are managing, as distinguished from nonmanaging (i.e., doing), activities:

1. Calling on an account with one of your salesmen to show a customer that company management interested in the account.

2. Making a sales presentation to a prospective customer in order to show one of your salesmen how do it.

3. Making an independent call on an officer of large account in order to cement customer relation ships and promote business.

4. Explaining how to solve a work problem which one of your people has just brought to you.

5. Filling out a form to recommend a salary increase for a member of your department.

6. Explaining to one of your people why he is receiving a salary increase.

7. Interviewing a prospective salesman referred to you by an employment agency.

8. Giving a telephone report of progress to your superior.

9. Asking one of your salesmen what he thinks about a selling idea you have.

10. Planning and deciding on a dollar sales objective by account.

11. Deciding what the cost budget request shall be for your sales office.

12. Reviewing monthly sales reports to determine progress toward specific sales objectives.

13. Deciding whether to meet a competitive price based on considerations beyond what the salesman has access to.

14. Deciding whether to recommend adding a position.

15. Drafting an improved sales office layout.

16. Asking your salesmen to establish tentative six-month objectives for the number of personal sales calls to be made on target accounts.

17. Giving a talk about your company’s progress and plans to a local service club.

18. Transferring an account from Salesman A to Salesman B because Salesman A did not devote the necessary effort to develop the account.

19. Phoning a plant manager to request help in solving a customer delivery problem for one of your salesmen.

20. Planning the extent to which your salesmen should use staff services during the next year to accomplish over-all sales objectives.

Concept of Managing

Before looking at suggested answers and explanations to the listing, let us consider a proposed simplified concept of managing for sales managers.

Managing can be defined as planning, directing, and controlling the activities of other people in the same organization in order to achieve or exceed desired objectives. It does have other meanings, but the managing we are concerned with here is the managing one is expected to do when he wants to get results through others.

It is easy to confuse selling with managing because one who sells is expected to get sales results through customers and prospects. Selling is not managing, however. The essential difference is that a person in a managerial position has authority and responsibility to get a job done through others in the same organization—and these others are expected to recognize his authority and responsibility to help accomplish the over-all objectives of the enterprise.

Helpful classifications

How does an objective differ from a forecast, or a budget, or a program? How does a policy differ from a procedure? These and other elements of managing can be distinguished and classified under the headings of planning, directing, and controlling:

In addition, communicating, deciding, and improving are applicable to each of the elements of managing. A manager must communicate and decide in accomplishing the other elements of managing, and he should certainly strive to improve in all elements of his managing. Definitions for each of these elements of managing along with examples tailored to the sales manager are listed in Exhibit I.

Exhibit I. Defination Of The Elements Of Managing With Examples Tailored To The Sales Manager

Suggested answers

Now let us look at suggested answers (with explanations) to the managing versus doing activities listed earlier:

1. Doing. This may be a highly necessary activity, but it is selling, not managing. The direct purpose of the call is not to get results through others.

2. Managing. This is training.

3. Doing. This is selling. The direct purpose is not to get results through others.

4. Managing. This is supervising, assuming the manager does not have his people come to him (so he can feel sufficiently needed or productive) for routine solutions to recurring problems which they are capable of handling. It would be counseling if a more formal, planned personal discussion were needed.

5. Doing. The actual filling out of the form is clerical. Instructing your secretary how to fill it out would be a managing activity in that it would be delegating.

6. Managing. This is motivating.

7. Doing. This may be an essential activity, but the manager is actually performing a personnel function in the same way that he is selling when calls on accounts. When he does interviewing, he is not currently getting results through others. Deciding to hire someone after all the recruiting and selecting has been done, however, would be considered a managing activity.

8. Managing. This is communicating for the purpose of control, provided the manager is doing so to receive possible guidance and direction. Otherwise it may be plain communicating, which anyone does whether he is a manager or not.

9. Managing. This is communicating, probably in order to develop a selling program, and it could be a form of motivating if the manager’s main purpose is to have the salesman participate in developing the idea in order to get later acceptance.

10. Doing. The manager is developing objectives—which is a managing activity—but he is not delegating; he is developing objectives by account which his salesmen should be best qualified to do since they work closely with the accounts. Were he to review the sales objectives of one of his salesmen, he would be managing, in that he would undoubtedly be planning part of an over-all sales objective to be accomplished by the salesmen as a group.

11. Managing. This is planning—developing a budget. Putting the budget in its proper form would be clerical.

12. Managing. This is measuring and evaluating.

13. Managing. This is probably coordinating—making sure that any price deviations are consistent with an over-all plan. This would be a doing activity, however, if procedures and controls could be set up in such a way that certain pricing decisions could be delegated.

14. Managing. This is developing the organization structure.

15. Doing. This is a methods engineering function. Deciding to get an improved office layout would be a managing activity.

16. Managing. This is developing objectives as well as standards of performance.

17. Doing. This is performing a public relations function.

18. Managing. This is correcting—taking corrective control action. This could also be considered the disciplining part of supervising.

19. Doing. This may be necessary, but it is the inside part of a salesman’s job. The direct purpose of the phone call is not to get results through, but rather for, your salesman.

20. Managing. This is developing a program of marketing strategy to achieve group results.

We can see that the difference between doing and managing can be subtle in many instances. Indeed two sales managers can appear to be performing identical activities; yet we would say one is managing and the other is not—depending on whether one’s intent is to get results through others.

Awareness of managing

I have pointed out that every sales manager has certain nonmanaging activities which he alone must perform. In fact, some of the sales manager’s non-managing activities may be more important than his managing activities in accomplishing the objectives of the enterprise. For example, this may be true where the sales manager is asked to establish and maintain working relationships with decision-making executives in large volume accounts; it may also be true where the sales manager is asked to participate in local community affairs because significant business is placed locally.

However, in most companies, managing responsibility is generally greater or more important than doing responsibility. Accordingly, it is important for the sales manager to have an awareness that he is not managing when he personally does selling, public relations, or the like. Only with this kind of awareness is he apt to strive to do as much managing as he should in his current job; only with this awareness is he apt to be able to develop himself as much as he should for the broader responsibilities where managing activities assume even greater importance to his company.

Teaching Managing

If sales managers are to manage as well as they should, top management will need to provide the climate and instigate or approve certain actions. Three examples of such actions follow.

1. Developing and disseminating a company-wide managing philosophy. This involves considering and communicating the facts that the company recognizes managing as a separate and distinct activity, and that managers should develop managing skills.

It is also highly desirable to relate the managing philosophy to corporate purposes or long-range objectives in terms of the products to be made, services to be rendered, markets to be served, obligations to all concerned, and profits and growth to be sought. For example:

In a few companies, the presidents have actually conducted a managing program for those reporting to them who, in turn, have conducted the same program for those reporting to them—and so on down through first-line supervision. The purpose is to ensure common understanding about both corporate objectives and a corporate managing philosophy.

2. Developing and implementing a program or programs designed to help sales managers having similar responsibilities to translate “textbook” managing into reality. This includes learning how to distinguish managing from doing in their particular job. For instance:

One large company has its sales managers attend several programs which it conducts. First, sales managers, along with other functional managers in the company, participate in a program designed to define and gain understanding of managing as a separate and distinct activity. Next, sales managers, along with other functional managers in the company, attend another program covering company marketing functions such as selling, customer service, advertising and sales promotion, and market research. Then, to exchange ideas and solutions to mutual managing problems, sales managers attend still another program designed specifically for sales managers with similar responsibilities.

Where this company uses several of its own programs to develop its sales managers, other companies with less complicated products and organization can accomplish similar results with only one program. Specifically:

Another large company uses a one-week program developed specifically to teach managing to its sales managers. The program is divided into nine sections: introduction, planning, organizing, directing through communication, directing through human relations, directing through leadership, directing through personnel development, measuring results, and cases in professional management. The program has planned follow-up. It is also being extended to cover both staff personnel who work with sales managers and potential sales managers.

3. Ensuring that the sales manager’s work conditions will allow him to manage. Even the best training or management development program in the world does not guarantee that a man will practice what he has learned. Most management seminars and courses leave the manager with an implied, “Go ye therefore and sin no more.” But the manager finds that it is a long road from the conference room to the job. As a result there are hundreds of thousands of dollars largely wasted in training and development programs every year. To ensure putting the managing theory into practice—to ensure real learning which many say can occur only on the job—there are three main considerations:

• The sales manager, like any other manager, is going to do what his boss tells him to do or expects of him—provided he wants to stay on the payroll. If, however, top management has not been exposed to, or is not in general sympathy with, the managing concepts promulgated in a sales manager’s program, the sales manager will be seriously limited in trying to apply what he learned. Indeed, the program may do more harm than good since the sales manager may become frustrated—perhaps to the point of leaving the company. This upholds the need for a company managing philosophy, but it also supports the need for the sales manager’s top management to participate in developing and conducting a sales manager’s program. Leaving the job entirely to corporate staff or to an outside consultant is not going to produce the desired results.

• The sales manager’s job content should be scrutinized to provide him with the responsibility and authority he needs to be able to manage. There are still hundreds of companies which hold their sales managers much more responsible for handling personal sales than for getting sales results through their salesmen. Then there is this kind of situation:

An industrial products company relieved most of its sales managers from responsibility for personal sales. But it reserved many managing decisions for the general management level or for headquarters staff. The result was that the sales managers complained that they were largely funnels for information going up or coming down—such as routine pricing decisions or nominal salary increases for their people.

• The management control reports which the sales manager receives and submits to top management should be designed to prod him into doing a balanced job of managing. Frequently the sales manager is asked to get along with control information developed primarily for accounting purposes. Not enough companies have analyzed the specific needs of the sales manager and designed their reports to help him manage.

• Often the sales manager is told that one of his prime managing responsibilities is to help increase corporate profits, but he has neither a profit contribution objective nor the scorecard to tell him how he is doing. His control reports are often limited to sales performance and sales expense budget compliance, which are translated into profit figures only at division or headquarters levels where accounting statements are customarily prepared. Under these conditions, the sales manager is tempted to accept unprofitable business because when his total sales are reviewed, the large unprofitable order contributes to making-him look better than the small profitable order.

• To encourage their sales managers to manage with corporate objectives in mind, a number of companies give their sales managers responsibility for achieving a profit contribution, gross profit, or marginal income objective as related to those factors under control by the sales manager.

Probably most top managements would agree that it is desirable, to teach sales managers how to manage and that these actions make sense. Why, then, haven’t more companies done so?

Bars to progress

There are a number of reasons why companies have not taught their sales managers to manage as well as they should. What are the more prevalent bars to progress?

1. There has been an overreliance on internal and external management development programs designed for managers in general. Sales managers have often been expected to learn managing cafeteria-style, taking some knowledge from here and some from there. Putting this knowledge into a meaningful framework for a particular job has been left largely up to the individual sales manager. As the director of personnel in a major corporation recently put it to me: “Sales managers learn blue-sky theory about managing in a typical management program, but by themselves they don’t make the transition from the program to the job.”

2. Companies think that it is impractical to get sales managers together for any length of time—else the wheels of business will stop turning. They think that it is difficult enough to get the sales managers together for vital administrative matters such as the introduction of new products, policies, or procedures.

I am sympathetic with this viewpoint, but it seems to me that the problem is more one of determining how important the sales manager’s managing is to the success of the marketing effort. A company can find the method (not necessarily a conventional one), the time, and the money for anything it believes is really important.

3. Some companies fear that if you emphasize a sales manager’s role as a manager, he will get grandiose ideas of his job and will no longer want to “roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty”—he will no longer feel compelled to continue to know the business. The fear is that the sales manager will become insulated from what is going on—that his men will be able to pull the wool over his eyes, that he will have to consult his people whenever top management wants specific information. This is what one executive meant when he told me: “Our company isn’t large enough for us to afford sales managers who just manage.”

Such an argument is reasonable, perhaps, when the main responsibility of the sales manager is not to get results through others. But, as I have contended throughout this article, if the sales manager’s main contribution to a marketing program’s success is to get results through his salesmen, then he should have a clear concept of managing as applied to his job. This means clarifying how he is to exercise judgment in keeping informed about details of customers, the market, problems and activities of his men, and so forth in relation to his responsibility to manage and to perform nonmanaging activities.

In general, it is a misconception that a manager who manages doesn’t “get his hands dirty.” But there are time limitations. Shall the sales manager keep informed about details of customers at the expense of developing the individuals in his department or of planning field implementation of marketing strategy? Shall he manage by exception? If so, how? And what is an approximate dollar value of a sales manager’s time as he performs various managing and nonmanaging activities?

A program which has been carefully developed to provide discussion of, and the basis for sound answers to, these kinds of questions is certainly going to give the sales manager a better modus operandi than when he has to develop the answers primarily by himself.

4. There are companies which rely largely on procedures and controls to see that a sales manager does his job. They teach him the procedures for hiring, training, forecasting, reporting, and so on, and see that he follows them—teach him to be a mechanic, not an engineer. This is fine for companies which can develop enough procedures and foolproof controls and which can find sales managers who do not mind being automatons with relatively little responsibility for independent judgment and creative solutions to management problems. The only problem is that it is very difficult to attract and hold high caliber people who are qualified for and want responsibility.

5. Many members of top management have not yet learned to distinguish between managing and doing. Although management theorists and those who stay abreast of management thinking have had this awareness for a long while, it usually takes years for sound management theory to be translated into practice in the majority of companies across the country. This is a problem particularly in sales management, where many top executives have worked their way up through top field sales performances; their own past skills may have been largely in doing.

It seems to me that the over-all impediment to getting sales managers to understand managing has been primarily one of recognition of what managing is.

Conclusion

Not too many years ago, the most prevalent practice in training salesmen was to give the new salesman a demonstrator, a price list, an order pad, and a kick in the pants to get out there and make those calls. In some ways, it seems to me, today’s training for sales managers is about where sales training was then. Many a sales manager is put in the job and told to manage. If he gets training or development, as he does in many companies, much of it misses the target.

My thesis has been that if the sales manager’s most important responsibility is to manage, then basic to his training and development should be an understanding of what managing is. But to get this understanding, I submit, requires a simplified concept of managing and a program specifically designed ground the day-to-day duties and responsibilities of sales managers in similar jobs in the same company—otherwise they do not really learn to distinguish managing from nonmanaging or doing.

The courses of action I propose are applicable to both large and small companies. The results of these actions can have a significant effect on a company’s profit and loss statement where the sales manager’s role in the marketing effort is an important one.

The salesman’s primary working relationship is with his customers whereas the manager’s is with his subordinates. We can see this distinction most clearly by listing in simple fashion the major groups with which salesmen and field sales managers ordinarily have relationships. In the tabulation below, the primary group for each is in italics:

It is evident that when the salesman receives a promotion to management he finds himself with a new, primary set of working relationships, namely subordinates. Customer contacts become secondary—unless, of course, the manager operates as a salesman. In terms of this one aspect of management then, our simple scale is “in balance” when the managers properly exercise their responsibilities to their subordinates and when these subordinates (salesmen), in turn, maintain good relations with their customers. The danger involved in having managers who are primarily supersalesmen is that “relations with subordinates,” including the development and supervision of salesmen, may deteriorate: the manager does not multiply himself.

A version of this article appeared in the May 1964 issue of Harvard Business Review.

What is a territory sales plan?

What is the function of sales management?

What are the steps in sales territory design?

What are the types of sales management?