Sales managers should not be recruiters and cheerleaders but business managers of territories, districts, and regions, with all the problems of scarce resources, government regulation, and shrinking profits. This article illustrates how microcomputers can help sales managers at all levels deal with the pressure and overcome the problems. These computers can help them plan sales strategies, develop and evaluate representatives, and estimate the outcomes of different strategies.

Common problems in managing accounts include deciding the right number of calls, improving the contribution of an account and reducing its costs, and allocating assets more effectively. Tasks of district management include reducing sales costs, managing assets more effectively, teaching time management, and evaluating representatives’ selling skills and overall performances. Before showing how microcomputers can help meet this challenge, I should explain why microcomputers and readily available software bring the power of the computer to all levels of sales management.

Advantages of Microcomputers
The rapid development of microcomputers and user-friendly, inexpensive software makes it possible to attack the problems just noted for less than $5,000 in hardware and software, at 1983 prices. And the user does not need to be a computer programmer or even to know how to type. All that is necessary is a microcomputer, a monitor, one disk drive, a printer, and a program for one of the so-called electronic spreadsheets (see the ruled insert for a description of spreadsheets).

Electronic Spreadsheets





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The exhibits in this article were made with the VisiCalc program, one of the most popular spreadsheet programs for microcomputers. VisiCalc, like SuperCalc, Multiplan, and other programs of its type, has rows and columns, which the user can label.1 The user also enters mathematical expressions for manipulating numbers in the table. When the user changes just one number in the table, the program automatically recalculates all related numbers (see the example in the ruled insert).

These electronic spreadsheets make it possible to construct a planning model quickly. This model can be saved on a disk for future use and, because disks are easily duplicated, each district sales manager could have one with the appropriate models for managing that district. A blank disk costs about $3.

General sales managers could encourage lower-level managers to create better strategies by supplying them with “template” disks containing standardized analytic approaches to common field sales management problems. (Such standardized analytic models are called templates because they are an overlay of the basic spreadsheet.) Persons in the home office or consultants could develop these models in cooperation with sales managers in the field.

To aid sales managers who are considering use of microcomputers to make their sales forces more productive, I will offer examples of industrial goods producers. Although few companies will find all of the examples relevant to their needs, just one application could increase the productivity of the sales force. The concepts are also applicable to other businesses, such as makers of pharmaceuticals and grocery store items, or to services, such as insurance companies and commercial banks.

Managing an Account
As Benson Shapiro and others have pointed out, many companies are using national account management designs to increase the productivity of their sales forces.2 The following paragraphs describe the ways national account managers can use microcomputers in solving their chief problems.

Assessing sales potential
Account managers must ask many strategic questions: Are we calling too often on an account? Should we pay more attention to existing accounts or try to develop new accounts? Are we getting equal penetration in all departments of an account? How can we increase our share of the account potential? Answers to these questions require a forecast of account potential.

Exhibit I shows the data and assumptions often used in forecasting the potential of an account. The sales planner enters the figures shown in brackets, which are account requirements for the previous period, estimated growth rates per period, sales for the previous period, estimated share points for the next period, and an estimate of the number of calls necessary to achieve these share points. The computer estimates total requirements for the forecast period, share points for the previous period, company sales, and sales per call. Exhibit I shows a sales projection by means of a simple model, but the planner could also use a more complex model.