Match your sales force structure to your business life cycle

Although companies devote considerable time and money to managing their sales forces, few focus much thought on how the structure of the sales force needs to change over the life cycle of a product or a business. However, the organization and goals of a sales operation have to evolve as businesses start up, grow, mature, and decline if a company wants to keep winning the race for customers. Specifically, firms must consider and alter four factors over time: the differing roles that internal salespeople and external selling partners should play, the size of the sales force, its degree of specialization, and how salespeople apportion their efforts among different customers, products, and activities. These variables are critical because they determine how quickly sales forces respond to market opportunities, they influence sales reps' performance, and they affect companies' revenues, costs, and profitability. In this article, the authors use timeseries data and cases to explain how, at each stage, firms can best tackle the relevant issues and get the most out of their sales forces. During start-up, smart companies focus on how big their sales staff should be and on whether they can depend upon selling partners. In the growth phase, they concentrate on getting the sales force's degree of specialization and size right. When businesses hit maturity, companies should better allocate existing resources and hire more general-purpose salespeople. Finally, as organizations go into decline, wise sales leaders reduce sales force size and use partners to keep the business afloat for as long as possible.     

新技术促发半导体设备市场欣欣向荣--向新技术的迁移带来了巨大的增长空间

有个利好消息:眼下半导体行业从90nm技术向65nm工艺的过度为晶圆加工设备制造商提供了大量的增长良机.随着过渡继续朝着三代新的技术(65nm、45nm和32nm甚至更小)进行,加工工具和检测工具需求量日益增长.     

Restructuring the automotive industry in the English West Midlands

This paper investigates the changes taking places in the automotive industry in the English West Midlands. For over a century this region has been the heartland of car production in the UK, but over recent decades the volume side of the trade has been in serious decline, leading to increasing dependence on the luxury side of the industry. The implications are that the supply side of the industry will be forced to move into new technologies if the auto cluster is to prosper in future. Finally, the paper looks at the attempts made by bodies such as Advantage West Midlands and the industry itself to effect change.     

So you want to run an experiment,now what? Some simple rules of thumb for optimal experimental design

Experimental economics represents a strong growth industry. In the past several decades the method has expanded beyond intellectual curiosity, now meriting consideration alongside the other more traditional empirical approaches used in economics. Accompanying this growth is an influx of new experimenters who are in need of straightforward direction to make their designs more powerful. This study provides several simple rules of thumb that researchers can apply to improve the efficiency of their experimental designs. We buttress these points by including empirical examples from the literature.     

倒装芯片封装市场快速增长

你可能不知道它在哪里,但是倒装芯片的机遇就在你的身边。普遍的小芯片几乎存在于今天所有热门消费小玩意儿当中,包括从移动电话、寻呼机到MP3播放器和数码相机等各种产品。由于小巧、便携式电子设备的发     

Subcultures and sustainability practices: the impact on understanding corporate sustainability

In this paper we present findings of how employees from a single organization understand corporate sustainability. Responses from 255 survey participants indicate (1) that differences exist in how employees understand corporate sustainability and (2) that these differences can be partially explained by the presence of organizational subcultures and by differences in employee awareness of the organization's sustainability practices. In particular, findings reveal that employees from a subculture with a stronger emphasis on hierarchical and bureaucratic values emphasize an economic understanding of corporate sustainability. Implications for research and practice are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.