Sales Management in Developing Countries: A Comparison of Managerial Control Perspectives

Abstract

ABSTRACT There are two perspectives on controlling the performance of salespeople–an outcome-based perspective and behavior-based perspective. The former process focuses on the objective measures of results while the latter perspective on performance control of salespeople incorporates complex and often subjective assessments of the attributes of sales people. A balance of these implications provides strong support for laying controls and evaluating the performance of sales people in varied sociocultural selling situations. This study has been conducted in two developing countries India and Mexico with varied sociocultural selling situations. The study discusses the impact of sales territory design on these consequences in reference to the underlying rationale of management control, incentive pay, and territory design as predictors of performance, and sales unit effectiveness and attempts to examine the relationships between incentive pay, management control, and their impact on salesperson performance and sales organization effectiveness.