EMERGING PERSPECTIVES ABOUT SALES CONTROL SYSTEMS AND SALES MANAGEMENT: A QUESTION OF PRODUCTIVITY AND PERFORMANCE: THE SELLING SALES MANAGER OR THE MANAGING SALES MANAGER?

Resource allocation decisions across the firm can significantly influence customer value delivery and firm profit. And, few functional areas have more impact on a firm's revenue stream than sales. This is particularly true in B2B settings which rely on a high degree of interpersonal interaction between a buyer and seller. In this environment, sales-focused investments typically dominate those supporting other marketing mix elements. Researchers have introduced a variety of models and methods over the years to deal with these issues and provide guidance to managers. Surprisingly, there is one critical and fundamental sales resource allocation issue that has escaped in-depth exploration to date: how should a sales manager allocate his/her time to maximize sales performance? Thus, the purpose of this research is to measure the efficiency of sales teams and determine what factors (from the perspective of the sales manager) play a role in increasing sales team performance. To do this we first establish a theoretical and qualitative basis for our investigation. We then combine data from salespeople, sales managers, and archival performance to measure the efficiency of sales teams. Next, we investigate how different factors influence the efficiency of sales teams. Specifically, we analyze how sales managers allocate their time across different core activities. We also create team profiles to determine how team characteristics and time allocation can influence team efficiency. Our research concludes with a discussion of these different profiles and ways which managers can alter their behaviors to gain the greatest return on their time investments. To begin our investigation we conducted 57 interviews with sales managers to determine how they allocated their time and across what types of activities. The primary objective was to obtain feedback about (a) the activities that managers must allocate their time across, (b) determine how they spend their time, and (c) uncover whether managers have selling and managing responsibilities. Interesting findings from this portion of research suggest that there are different types of managers that fall on a continuum of activities from selling activities (selling sales manager) to solely management activities (managing sales manager). On the left hand of the continuum is the selling sales manager who has the dual responsibility of achieving a personal sales quota and managing other salespeople. On the far right of the continuum is the managing sales manager who focuses solely on managing a sales team. The center, and largest portion of the continuum, holds the hybrid sales manager. This manager type both manages her or his salespeople for future growth and interacts with customers to close sales. Due to its significant size, we focus on the group of hybrid sales managers in this research. To empirically test how a sales manager's time allocations affect the efficiency of sales teams we follow a two-step semi-parametric approach using multilevel data from a B2B sales force of a U.S.-based firm. In the first step we measure sales team efficiencies using a non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach to establish each sales team's level of efficiency. In step two we use a parametric regression approach to determine how a sales manager's time allocation decisions explain the efficiencies of sales teams. Our results highlight the importance of effective time management for sales managers and are instructive as to how managers should allocate their time across managing, customer interaction and administrative activities. To our knowledge this is the first paper that empirically examines how a sales manager should allocate his or her time on selling versus managing so as to maximize sales efficiency for the entire sales team for which he or she is responsible. We believe that this study makes a significant contribution to the literature in three different ways. First, we find that managers can be most effective at influencing sales team efficiency through interaction at both the customer level and subordinate level. Second, we find that many sales managers are managing too little. It appears that managing is more valuable for improvements in efficiency than selling. Third, on average, we find that those teams with the highest level of experience versus those with less experience achieve greater efficiency through additional management while the lesser experienced teams require less managing for greater efficiency. In all, this study highlights an important area where sales managers are sub-optimizing performance through misallocation of time toward activities. The use of hybrid sales managers can be a sensible strategy. However, firms must attend to the sales manager's allocation of time, which can be dramatically out of balance. Addressing this issue has practical ramifications in the areas of structure, selection, training, evaluation, and compensation. From a structural perspective, firms employing hybrid sales managers should ensure that the sales manager is not too heavily laden with other responsibilities such that his/her ability to devote sufficient time to managing is compromised. In terms of selection and training, firms must take care when promoting salespeople to sales manager positions that the new sales manager has the managerial skills to succeed, understands the value of building skills within the sales team (in particular with experienced salespeople), and guards against tendencies to revert to more selling behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]