Subject Overview

Sales Force Management examines how organizations design, deploy, lead, enable and evaluate sales forces to achieve customer and business objectives. It integrates established sales management principles with strategy, analytics, CRM, AI, omnichannel selling, governance and contemporary workforce practices.

Learning Goal

Students will be able to formulate sales strategy, organize and size a sales force, manage talent and incentives, allocate territories and quotas, use analytics and technology, lead ethical customer-focused selling, and make evidence-based managerial decisions in changing markets.

Syllabus

1. Foundations and Strategic Role of Sales Force Management

Learning Objective: Explain sales management terminology, the evolution and roles of selling, B2B and B2C contexts, salesperson responsibilities, the sales management cycle, and alignment among corporate, marketing, customer and sales strategies.

Category: foundation

2. Buyer Behaviour and the Professional Selling Process

Learning Objective: Analyse organizational and consumer buying behaviour, buying centres and customer journeys; apply prospecting, qualification, needs discovery, value propositions, presentations, objection handling, negotiation, closing and post-sale relationship management.

Category: foundation

3. Sales Strategy, Planning and Go-to-Market Design

Learning Objective: Develop market coverage and route-to-market choices using segmentation, targeting, channel strategy, sales objectives, sales budgets, competitive analysis and sales-marketing-service alignment.

Category: strategic

4. Sales Organization Structure and Workforce Design

Learning Objective: Compare geographic, product, customer, functional, key-account, inside-sales, field-sales, partner and hybrid structures; determine spans of control, reporting relationships, role specialization and coordination mechanisms.

Category: core

5. Sales Forecasting, Capacity and Sales Force Sizing

Learning Objective: Apply qualitative and quantitative forecasting methods, pipeline and scenario analysis, workload, breakdown and incremental sizing approaches; translate demand forecasts into headcount, capacity and budget decisions.

Category: core

6. Territory Design, Routing and Quota Management

Learning Objective: Design equitable territories, allocate accounts and workload, optimize routing, establish activity, volume, revenue, profit and strategic quotas, and diagnose quota fairness, attainability and behavioural effects.

Category: application

7. Sales Talent Acquisition, Selection and Onboarding

Learning Objective: Conduct job and competency analysis, workforce planning, recruitment and structured selection; evaluate assessment validity, diversity and legal considerations, and design effective onboarding and early-tenure support.

Category: core

8. Sales Training, Coaching and Capability Development

Learning Objective: Diagnose competency gaps, design outcome-based training, use role plays and field coaching, assess learning transfer and ROI, and build capabilities in consultative, solution, social, virtual and insight-led selling.

Category: application

9. Motivation, Leadership, Culture and Team Management

Learning Objective: Apply motivation theories and leadership models to sales settings; manage engagement, psychological safety, remote and hybrid teams, collaboration, conflict, stress, burnout, retention and change.

Category: core

10. Compensation, Incentives and Recognition

Learning Objective: Design salary, commission, bonus, team and non-financial reward plans aligned with strategy; model pay mix, thresholds, accelerators and caps while controlling cost, risk, gaming and unintended behaviour.

Category: core

11. Performance Management and Sales Analytics

Learning Objective: Build balanced scorecards and KPI systems covering activities, pipeline, conversion, velocity, win rates, revenue, margins, retention and customer outcomes; use dashboards, variance analysis, benchmarking and diagnostic analytics for corrective decisions.

Category: advanced

12. CRM, Sales Enablement, Automation and AI

Learning Objective: Evaluate CRM architecture, data quality, sales enablement platforms, mobile and social selling, workflow automation, lead scoring, predictive forecasting, recommendation and generative AI; address adoption, human oversight, privacy, security, bias and model governance.

Category: contemporary

13. Key Account, Relationship and Omnichannel Management

Learning Objective: Apply account portfolio analysis, account planning, lifetime value, relationship quality, team selling and strategic partnership methods; coordinate direct, digital, partner and service channels while managing channel conflict and customer experience.

Category: strategic

14. Ethics, Governance and the Future of Sales Leadership

Learning Objective: Resolve ethical dilemmas involving pressure selling, misrepresentation, incentives, customer data and conflicts of interest; establish controls and compliance, and assess globalization, sustainability, platform selling, subscription models, augmented selling and future sales-force capabilities.

Category: contemporary