Building the Junior Marketing Executive

Abstract

THE SUCCESS of a war-time maneuver depends quite as much upon the ability of the lieutenants and captains who actively direct the troop movement as upon the training of the troops themselves or the capacity of the general who plans the strategy. The same holds true in a marketing offensive to an even greater degree because the resources available to the managements of competing companies are usually on a par and the general policies of such companies are not widely divergent. During the last decade there has been no stone left unturned in training salesmen. We have developed systematic routing methods, incentivewage systems, contests, bonus plans; we have conducted schools in sales education; devised canned sales talks; provided elaborate sample cases, portfolios, slidefilms and projectors, as well as a world of other sales tools to gear up the accomplishments of the sales force. But in the mad scramble to perfect the rank and file of our selling organizations, marketing managers have largely overlooked the men who hold positions in the next highest rank; the junior marketing executives. In every major marketing organization, there is a group of these men who, whatever their titles may be, have the common task of directing and supervising the activities of salesmen and other marketing personnel on the firing line. Like captains and lieutenants of the army, they look to a superior authority for the formulation of general policies and broad objectives; similarly, too, they are charged with responsibility for the proper functioning and progress of a small group of workers who lead the offensive in a particular sector. Their significance in the success or failure of an enterprise is tremendous. The distributing department of a gigantic industry can no more be handled by a sales manager and a horde of isolated salesmen than a war could be won by the Chief of Staff and an army of buck privates. Still our junior executives have received relatively less managerial attention than any other group in marketing.