Functional organization

We have already discuss some important factor for the organization and those are customer organization, control organization etc…Today we are going to discuss on functional organization which is most important part of any organization and it can useful for any small business. A functional organization can be characterized as giving staff managers line authority for a product, brand, or aspect of the salesman’s performance. Instead or one manager giving him orders, the salesman may have several. Herein lies two deterrents to the functional organization division of responsibility and conflict of interest.

With a functional organization, field sales gets the advantages of specialization. Market plans developed by product managers will carry line rather than advisory authority, thus materially increasing the odds for implementation. By narrowing the scope of the field sales manager’s job to primarily direction and control he can become more specialized. Organizing on the basis of job aspects such as marketing research, advertising, and sales analysis is not nearly as prevalent as it once was with the changing role of field sales as a function of marketing.

Instant Life Insurance rates, Term Life Insurance, Sales Force Management

Span-of-control organization

Firms that use one or more of the other bases of division may combine them with span-of-control organization. This form of organizational structure is predicated on the assumption that there is some ideal or desirable span of control for a field sales manager. The determined number is considered a reasonable maximum for optimizing field sales manager’s performance relative to the selling efforts of salesmen. More than this number and the field sales manager will not have sufficient time for each of the salesmen assigned to his jurisdiction.

One manufacturer has determined that the ideal span of control for their district sales managers is ten salesmen. There is no stated number above ten when splits are made. Rarely, however, will a district be allowed to get any bigger than 15 salesmen. Future sales prospects have a lot of influence of the timing of the split at a lower number than might otherwise be the case.

The main drawback is the inverse relationship of the span of control to the number of tiers of sales management. The narrower the span of control, the more likely will be the necessity of another level of dales management. This increase in executive overhead raises disproportionately selling expenses as a percent of sales. A second drawback is the difficulty that may be experienced in determining when a new sales unit should be broken out.