THE SALES MANAGER-HIS QUALIFICATIONS AND DUTIES 1. Necessity for efficient sales management.— Sales management is distinctly a present-day prob lem. Not so many years ago the principal business houses of the country were distributors of staples ; they sold goods for which there was a demand already existing. The area in which they could sell was, to a. great extent, limited by the lack of shipping facilities. They felt that they were entitled to a fair share of the business within this territory. The salesman was looked upon as a man who merely called upon dealers, a bail fellow well met, who by story-telling and gen eral good fellowship, secured the orders that the dealer had to place. The distributors failed to realize that the methods of handling the salesmen from headquar ters had much to do with the volume of business turned in by the selling force.
Consequently, the sales department Is-as looked upon as a sort of necessary evil, and the salesman was too often considered a more or less irresponsible per son, who was unfitted for any of'the really important departments of business, and who had capitalized a roaming disposition and a pleasing personality. The supervision of the salesman was often left either to the proprietor's promising young son—whose activ ities in this direction consisted principally of writing letters of carping criticism—or to the trusted book keeper, who considered sales management a kind of side issue and confined his supervision almost entirely to criticism of the expense accounts.
It remained for the sellers of specialties to show what could be done by an efficient and properly man aged sales organization. In specialty lines enthusias tic and properly trained selling forces, under the direc tion of men with a proper conception of the meaning and the importance of sales management, have created markets for their products out of nothing; have suc ceeded in fields where it was necessary to educate the consumer and create the demand before a sale could be made; have changed the antagonism of prospects into active cooperation; and have. evinced a loyalty for
their bouses previously unknown in staple lines.
Andrew Carnegie is reported as having once said that if his business were taken from him, but his or ganization were left to him, it would be a compara tively simple matter to build up a new business; but that if his organization were taken from him it would be a much more serious matter, since without his or ganization the business would inevitably fail and the building of a new organization, except by a gradual process extending over a long period, would be an im possibility. There is no other phase of business in which organization is as important as in selling; and an efficient organization cannot be achieved without the expenditure of time and labor. To build a loyal and efficient selling force, and to create in it a proper spirit, is the work of months and even years.
The old order of management, only slightly modi fied, still obtains in a great many staple houses. The small minority of such houses as have applied specialty methods to their sales management; however, have been remarkably successful. Their success has given a stimulus to the idea that, as production is generally unrestricted, the growth of a business is dependent on how much it can sell, and that the volume of the sales depends upon the organization, training and manage ment of the selling force. Managers are, coming to realize more and more that the methods of managing the men in the field determine, to a great extent, the volume of business they turn in, the measure of their loyalty and enthusiasm, and the length of time the best of them will remain with the organization. And the policy of the management will have everything to do, too, with the extent to which new men of the right caliber will be attracted to the organization. The first principle in the organization and maintenance of a successful selling force requires that selling be recog nized as the most important part of the business.