Effective Human Resource Management in the Sales Force

This non-conventional book provides a human resource perspective to sales force management. It describes sales forces as complex systems of human interactions and shows how a decision in one area is likely to have direct, but also more or less desirable and lasting effects, on other aspects of the sales force. Managing human resources is no simple task, and in a sales force context, the difficulty is compounded by the fact that managers often have limited control and knowledge of what salespeople do once in the field.

The book addresses most sales force human resource decisions by contrasting prevalent industry practices with relevant research findings that could bear on sales force management and by showing how a simple managerially oriented tool can capture much of the sales force system's complexity. Special attention is devoted to such questions as how to identify top sales producers; how to generate candidates from the best sources of salespeople; how to select and hire the best sales producers; how to enhance and maintain sales effectiveness over time; how to set up effective compensation and sales quota plans; and how to manage sales force turnover. This book will help sales managers and supervisors to take a more integrated view to sales management. It can also help salespeople to be more effective in their tasks and to prepare them for a career in management.

RENE Y. DARMON is Professor of Marketing and Research Director at ESSEC, Cergy-Pontoise, France. He is co-author of some 14 books on marketing, advertising, and marketing research, and a widely published author of sales management research articles in such publications as Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and Journal of the Operational Research Society.