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Comment on “Analysis of Sales Call Effectiveness”

In a recent JMR article, Parsons and Vanden Abeele (1981) present an analysis of sales call effectiveness within the salesforce of a Belgian pharmaceutical manufacturer. The stated purpose of the article is to develop a sales response to sales calls function, with specific emphasis on how call effectiveness relates to the use in the call of collateral material such as handouts and samples. Unquestionably, these factors are important to sales managers because, as the authors point out, a sales response function is a necessary building block in any decision model for salesforce resource management. However, the results from this specific study and their implications must be tempered by some measurement and interpretation issues which the authors do not point out.