Homework 3: Sales Territories

Debora Rismarito
Technical Sales and Marketing

1. In answering the question about whether to use a breakdown approach or equalized

workload approach when selling a technologically complex product or service. Before
that, there are advantages and disadvantages associated with each approach. The
breakdown approach is the easiest approach among all the methods in determining
sales force size, it is the total sales forecasted at the company level divided by a sales
representative and focuses on the population number of consumers. The advantage
of this method is the ease of implementation and not require complex calculations.
However, the breakdown method ignores the potential customer and treated the sales
at the same level of productivity in all market areas. For the equalized workload
approach, the fundamental thing in this method is the calculation of workload (time
needed to serve all markets) divided by hour sales available or a working hour per
salesperson. This method also considers the company location and size.

However, the disadvantage of this method is that all markets require the same effort,
also, the salesperson treated as they have the same capability but in reality, it is not.
On the other side, the advantage of this method is it can facilitate each area with a
diverse category of the customer depending on the effort required. Also, this method
grouping salesperson based on their proficiency. In the case of selling the
technologically complex product, I recommend using the equalized workload. Since
the product is complex, it is better to divide it into the workload. The treatment is
different between various customer company size and this method can also assign
some expert that has more experience in technology in the particular area that has a
high-potential sale (company size, location, and other factors) to win the customer and
show the in-depth knowledge regarding the product or service.

2. For the given scenario, below is the answer for each day to maximize the sales
potential.

Travel time : 15 minutes/each side of each small square

Sales call : 30 minutes
Working hours : 8:00 AM-5:00 PM
Lunch : 15-minute blocks of time (for example 15,30,45 or 60 minutes)
Limitation : After 5:00 PM Customer does not see salespeople, the last customer
cannot be contacted after 4:30 PM
Customer Sales Customer Sales
Potential Potential
A $ 4,000 I $ 3,000
B $ 3,000 J $ 2,000
C $ 6,000 K $ 10,000
D $ 2,000 L $ 12,000
E $ 3,000 M $ 8,000
F $ 8,000 N $ 9,000
G $ 4,000 O $ 8,000
H $ 6,000 P $ 10,000
 L E F H M

K N

I O R J
Your
favorite
restaurant

C P

D B

G S A

Start
Figure 1

A. The route that gives the highest sales potential when the managers work with me
is described below: The route is Start-P-N-M-H-K-R-O-F-E-L

Travel Arrival
Sales Call Time Departure Time Sales Potential
Time Time
Start - - - 8:00 AM -
P 30 min 8:30 AM 30 min 9:00 AM 10000
N 30 min 9:30 AM 30 min 10:00 AM 9000
M 30 min 10:30 AM 30 min 11:00 AM 8000
H 15 min 11:15 AM 30 min 11:45 AM 6000
K 30 min 12:15 PM 30 min 12:45 PM 10000
R 15 min 1:00 PM 15 min 1:15 PM -
O 15 min 1:30 PM 30 min 2:00 PM 8000
F 30 min 2:30 PM 30 min 3:00 PM 8000
E 15 min 3:15 PM 30 min 3:45 PM 3000
L 15 min 4:00 PM 30 min 4:30 PM 12000
Total 74000
 B. For the second day, the route that will allow me to contact the remaining customer
is explain below: Start-A-B-D-J-R-I-C-G

Travel Arrival
Sales Call Time Departure Time Sales Potential
Time Time
Start - - - 8:00 AM -
A 15 min 8:15 AM 30 min 8:45 AM 4000
B 15 min 9:00 AM 30 min 9:30 AM 3000
D 30 min 10:00 AM 30 min 10:30 AM 2000
J 60 min 11:30 AM 30 min 12:00 PM 2000
R 30 min 12:30 PM 15 min 12:45 PM -
I 45 min 1:30 PM 30 min 2:00 PM 3000
C 30 min 2:30 PM 30 min 3:00 PM 6000
G 45 min 3:45 PM 30 min 4:15 PM 4000
Total 24000

L E F H M

K N

I O R J
Your
favorite
restaurant

C P

D B

G S A

Start
Figure 1
Blue Arrow : Day 1
Green Arrow : Day 2