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Sales managers can use simple mathematics to help their subordinates monitor their performance. The ideal sales force has a combination of human relations skills and mathematical know-how. Business enterprises should revive the practice of tallying the number of phone calls, the number of appointments made via the calls, the number of proposals that result from the appointments and the number of actual sales made from the proposals. A useful formula called the Closing Ratio is discussed.

The name of the game is selling relationships, not just loans, when it comes to soliciting and servicing businesses, especially those in the middle market. In this article, the author tells how his bank is restructuring its organization to concentrate on the total relationship in an attempt to reach more segments of that lucrative middle market. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

How to cut costs in sales management: consolidate marketing function, computerize paperwork, cut down on meetings and conference attendance, better management and use temporary sales help.

Sales & Marketing Management's Survey of Selling Costs, now in its twelfth year, has always endeavored to bring its readers the most useful and up-to-date information on sales force expenditures […]

Companies are seeking alternative methods for dealing with their business customers as a result of the disparity between the rising cost of sales calls and the revenue required to support them. Salespeople have historically maintained and documented the relationship with a company's customer, but because smaller customers are becoming too expensive to service with salespeople, this recordkeeping could be lost. Direct marketing can be effective for sustaining and enhancing the 'personal' relationship between a company and its customers, and requires a database that can record details of sales activity. A direct marketing database can be complex, and its development should be evolutionary. Business-to-business catalogs, telephone selling, and direct marketing newsletters can all be effective vehicles for relationship marketing.

In these days of close margins and intensive competition, every executive is analyzing every phase of his business in an attempt to squeeze out unnecessary expense items and reduce high […]

The high cost of complex product sales can be managed through an effective control of the following: sales call planning, selling formulas, account planning, and premature technology introduction. An efficient sales call plan would have an objective, inventory of resources, incorporation into a broader strategy, and an item of action for the potential customer. Account planning must include a product's total potential and be honed and maintained at higher management levels. Matching sales capabilities with needs of the prospect is also a key factor in reducing complex product costs. Technology should be one of the last areas reserved for qualified potential customers of the sales process.

The expense account has always been a major source of concern, both for the salespeople who have to watch what they spend and for the sales managers who have to […]