Abstract

The article focuses on marketing effectiveness and sales supervision. The increasing importance of a few pivotal customers poses a decisive new challenge to sales management--the third crucial challenge of the post-war period. Faced with tougher competition and productive capacity exceeding demand, companies have taken significant steps in the years since World War II to improve distribution and lower costs. This new kind of management can be seen in action among enlightened supervisors of professional and creative personnel in technological fields, laboratories, and space projects. They have adopted management by objective. Delegating many how-to-do-it decisions, they give individuals and groups assignments in terms of the end product itself, not in terms of the way it is to be accomplished. Management must know more about the types and sizes of customer accounts if it is to make reasonable assignments in terms of objectives rather than short-term activities. Thus, improving the supervision of the new breed of salesmen requires more rather than less attention to detail.