SALES FORCE MANAGEMENT.

By Profs.Kenneth R. Davis and Frederick E. Web-ster Jr. '59 (Tuck School). New York:Ronald Press Company, 1968. 764 pp.$10.

The title of this excellent text does not begin to do full justice to the scope of its content. The authors, ranging far and wide in their field work, have collected 38 case histories to illustrate the classical problems faced by sales force management. Throughout, Davis and Webster cover many areas of selling, and these discussions by themselves are extremely valuable to anyone in the business of selling. Their main emphasis, however, is placed on the managerial responsibilities of those who run a sales force.

The sales force in most companies has come a long way in the last 20 years. It has grown bigger and stronger and more complicated. It represents a scattered army of men engaged in selling at every level from wholesale to retail. How to keep the salesman's morale up and his efforts productive requires tremendous planning. Davis and Webster understand these problems and show how to solve them in chapter after chapter with such headings as Field Sales Organization, The Communication Process, Buyer Salesman Interaction, Recruiting and Selecting Salesmen, Sales Training, Motivation and Supervision of Salesmen, Compensating Salesmen, to name only a few.

The authors are to be commended for their clarity of style and their excellent summaries at the end of each chapter. For the busy executive this makes for easy reading. This in itself is quite an accomplishment when subjects like communications, feedback, and computer programming are being discussed.

Because of inflation and the increasing costs of putting salesmen into the field, SalesForce Management should be must reading for every business executive. Peter Drucker, for example, has serious doubts about the place of the sales force in the marketing and economics of the future. So the efficiency of the sales force is more vital than ever.

For the present, however, Charley's comments about Willy Loman in Death of aSalesman still epitomize the main problem of running a sales force: "Nobody dast blame this man. You don't understand! Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory."

From my 35 years of experience, keeping the salesman dreaming is about as important as everything else in managing him. This is said only in the deepest respect for Professors Davis and Webster and their wise tome Sales Force Management.

Mr. Bayles is Chairman of the Board ofSullivan, Stauffer, Colwell & Bayles, Inc., ofNew York City.