The purpose of this thesis was to develop a profile of the typical British Columbia sales executive; his background, his present personal and business status, his duties and responsibilities, and his aspirations. The thesis also examines characteristics of the companies for which the sales managers worked. These characteristics include: the type of goods sold, size in terms of gross sales, growth prospects, and the standardization of certain procedures such as salesmen evaluation and job descriptions. Certain areas were developed to compare individual sales executive statistics and company statistics with a similar study undertaken in 1960. This identified changes which took place and trends which are developing. The investigation was essentially statistical and the data gathered was obtained through the use of an involved questionnaire. The questionnaire was mailed to sales executives of public companies which had sales offices in British Columbia. The cooperation of the respondents was most satisfactory and resulted in a questionnaire return of over 68 percent. The average sales executive of the study was 45 years old, and employed in a branch office of a consumer goods company whose aggregate sales were over $15,000,000. He was born in an urban area of well educated white collar parents. He is much better educated than the average Canadian. Although this thesis concludes that the level of formal education has very little bearing on level of income, it does establish that education is becoming a more important factor in the selection and promotion of sales executives. Average incomes were relatively high, averaging about $15,000 including bonuses and commissions. The vast majority of sales managers were married and had somewhat larger families than the Canadian average. They owned their homes and valued them well in excess of the British Columbia average. The study indicated a disproportionate increase in incomes of these sales managers as compared to the 1960 study. There are indications that there has been an upgrading of personnel which has consequently led to the higher income levels. The companies involved in this study posted a rapid rate of growth over the six year period. Sales volume expanded dramatically. The proportion of branch offices increased and over 20 percent of the branch office respondents were in positions created within the previous five years. Almost one half of the respondents were involved with the training of new salesmen. Less than one third of the companies maintained a formal programme for this function. Formal salesmen evaluation systems were standard procedure in slightly over one half of the companies, and job descriptions for sales managers and salesmen were the rule rather than the exception. The typical sales executive was involved in a wide range of activities but found directing the sales force, training salesmen, and personal selling the most time consuming as well as the most important of his responsibilities. He has a wider direct span of control than his 1960 counterpart but conversely has responsibility for fewer indirect and non-sales staff. Despite the higher than average educational level for the group as a whole, the average sales manager did not have a university education and began his career in his late teens. He has been quite stable in terms of inter-company changes as his experience has been largely gained with his present employer. All indications are that the typical sales manager has achieved his present position through promotions in the sales end of the business. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This thesis presents a general review of sales forecasting literature with particular attention to the preparation of the sales forecast, the pre-planning activities and the review. In addition, forecasts are developed which show the expected sales of domestic softwood plywood to be realized by the plywood industry for the years 1964 and 1968. A procedure is then presented that Crown Zellerbach Company can follow in using the industry forecast to ascertain their share of the expected softwood plywood sales. Sales forecasting is an essential prerequisite to company planning. Therefore, forecasts must be as accurate as possible because many activities within the firm are based on the sales forecasts. With the assistance of sales forecasts, vital marketing, financial and production plans ultimately emerge, together with their supporting schedules. The person responsible for the forecasting task must acquire not only a detailed understanding of company activities but also a thorough knowledge of the characteristics of a sound forecasting operation. The forecaster must be familiar with the various judgment, survey and statistical techniques available for developing forecasts and he must understand the necessity of carrying out numerous pre-performance and post-performance activities. The pre-performance activities must be dutifully carried out if the most useful forecasting method is to be chosen. Post-performance activities are equally important. A time-table for review and revision when necessary must be drawn up ahead of time if proper control is to be exercised over the forecast. A simple regression equation and three multiple regression equations are developed with the intention of using one or more of them to forecast industry softwood plywood sales for the years 1964 and 1968. The three multiple linear regression equations are rejected because each of them possesses one or more unacceptable negative constants. The simple linear regression equation has an extremely high coefficient of correlation and a small standard error of estimate. Since this equation contains these desirable features and seems to incorporate no underlying fallacy, this simple regression equation is the one chosen to forecast industry plywood sales. The share-of-market approach is used to determine the proportion of the industry sales to be captured by Crown Zellerbach Company. The total projected industry sales figures are multiplied by a percentage which represents the company's present share of the total market. The figures that result represent the anticipated plywood sales to be achieved by Crown Zellerbach Company for the years 1964 and 1968. Crown Zellerbach should not depend solely on the technique developed in this thesis for forecasting plywood sales. They should continue to use the subjective or judgment technique that they have used for a number of years, but they would follow a better course if they used one or more statistical or survey methods in addition to the present method. A final forecast could be selected after an analysis had been made of the forecasted figures developed by the various methods. / Business, Sauder School of / Marketing, Division of / Graduate

This thesis deals with the in-store marketing and its application in the supermarket Billa ltd. The work is divided into the theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part deals with sales support, which includes in-store marketing. In the practical part I describe the current trends within in-store marketing and the merchandising problems there as well. The practical work is also dedicated to the description of the actual means of in-store marketing in the supermarket Billa ltd. The actual research work is carried out on the basis of survey and field survey of the supermarket. Using the obtained results and their comparison with the supermarket Albert are defined and I evaluated current trends in in-store marketing within the supermarket Billa ltd.

The principle behind outsourcing is that an organization outsources tasks it strategically elects not to do within the organization. It is estimated that outsourcing has become a $4 trillion a year business (Corbett, 2005). In today's competitive healthcare marketplace, many sponsors outsource functions that were once considered core to the organization. U.S. Census data show that 10% of all business-to-business sales originated from outsourced sales (Rogers, 2008). The objective of engaging in outsourcing of sales is to improve sales efficiency and gain an edge in today's challenging market. Competition within the pharmaceutical industry coupled with increased regulatory uncertainties and cost concerns have necessitated outsourcing of sales to maintain competitiveness and to apply internal resources more effectively. This research will contribute to the current available works specific to the outsourcing of pharmaceutical sales.

Data relevant to five separate areas of a worker's job satisfaction (satisfaction with: work, pay, promotion opportunities, co-workers and supervision) were gathered from a sample of 98 male Coloured salesmen and 95 male White salesmen, employed in different branches of a life assurance company in South Africa. Furthermore, measures were obtained of the subjects' feelings of overall job satisfaction and dissatisfaction, in order to investigate the validity of Herzberg's theory that job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction are qualitatively different and that, as a result, they should be measured separately. Next, measures were obtained of the subjects' feelings of internal versus external control in life. Separate measures were obtained on the two subscales of personal control and control ideology of Gurin's Internal-External Scale (1969). The subjects were asked to indicate in what class (upper, middle or lower) they regarded themselves to be and with what class they compared themselves. Analysis of these data included: (a) the Coloured subjects were more satisfied with their jobs than the White subjects; (b) the workers who compared themselves with a higher comparative reference-group were less satisfied with their jobs than were workers who compared themselves with their membership reference-group, or with a lower comparative reference-group. An explanation of these findings in terms of frames of reference and alternatives available to the workers is offered. (c) The Coloured subjects were less internally-orientated than the Whites and expressed less sense of personal control over their lives; (d) feelings of personal control were more highly correlated with satisfaction with intrinsic than with extrinsic job-aspects. The present study established not only the usefulness of reference-group theory as a social explanation for differences in workers' satisfaction with various job-aspects, but also served to remove cultural limitations of Gurin et aI's theory of internal-external control and to increase its generality. Finally, measures of internal-external control were related to satisfaction with intrinsic and extrinsic job-aspects, and the I-E concept was related to the social reference-group theory.

United States business leaders spend $15 billion per year on sales training, but approximately 50% of salespeople still fail to reach their annual sales targets. Business leaders have limited understanding of the relationship between emotional intelligence and its central constructs (self-perception, self-expression, interpersonal, decision making, and stress management) and sales performance of sales professionals based in the United States. The purpose of this correlational research study was to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence and sales performance via an online pre-existing emotional intelligence assessment. The theoretical framework incorporated emotional intelligence theory and job performance theory. The sample included 86 technology sales professionals working in the United States who were recruited through a nonrandom purposive sampling method. The correlation results showed an association exists between decision making and sales performance (r = .310, n = 73; p Ë? .01). For all 6 predictor variables, the regression model was not a significant predictor of sales performance, F(6,66) = 1.295, p = .272, R-² = .105. By including only decision making, the linear regression model was a significant predictor of sales performance, F(1,71) = 7.550, p Ë? .01, R-² = .096. The results were not generalizable, but suggest that decision making is significant in achieving sales performance. These results suggest that higher decision making skills lead to higher sales performance. Social implications for sales and business leaders include using these results to seek and hire emotionally intelligent sales professionals and training existing sales professionals about emotional intelligence competencies to improve company-wide sales performance.

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Through the use of multiple methodologies and analytical approaches, this dissertation combines (1) sales control; (2) call center service; and (3) motivational theory to extend sales control literature beyond its current state, to consider the conflicting motivational perspectives an inside sales agent has to experience. To achieve this unification, this dissertation consists of three essays intended to: (1) identify the influence of autonomous and controlled motivation on operational sales outcome controls and performance; (2) explore the influence these motivators have on sales controls and sales performance; and, (3) understand the impact of autonomous and controlled motivation on sales agent tenure.