Question

What are the advantages and disadvantages of organizing the IPI salesforce by product line

Answer 1

answer-

The advantages of organizing the IPI salesforce through a product line is that the representatives can develop strong knowledge of the product of a particular product line, questions of a product can be answered confidently by the representative in charge of a particular product line, and it makes it to easier find the representative in charge of a product line .

By utilizing a salesforce by product line salespeople become experts in product attributes and application. The salespersons expertise allows them to better address technical questions clients may have about the product or how to use it. A salespersons knowledge of the issue allows clients to feel more trusting of their responses and willing to work with them more.

Also, a major advantage is that management controls overselling effort allocated to the product. Therefore, management will be able to determine how much selling effort they will give to each product. This means that if a product does not sell well the manager will allocate minimal selling effort to the product on the other hand if it does sell well they will allocate more selling effort to the product. Lastly, the knowledge and oversight management has leads to the fact that customers and distributors are dealing with people in line positions who can close the sales and there is no staff positions utilized.

The disadvantages of organizing the IPI salesforce by product line is that Utilizing a product line organization leads to higher costs because you have multiple salespeople operating in the same geographic area with the same customers. Due to the product based structure, you have to send more than one salesperson to meet with the same client when they want to purchase more than one product from your company.

Salesforce organization by product line is likely to scare away customers due to duplication efforts. There is the aspect of duplication of efforts triggered by geographies and customer accounts. Duplication of efforts raises the costs needed to finance salespersons.