Service Marketing

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Which factors complicate the task of motivating the foreign sales force?

Motivation is the inner force that guides behaviour and is concerned with the

causation of specific actions. Motivation is especially challenge because the company is

dealing with different cultures, different sources, and different philosophies. Philip R.Cateora,

Mary C.Gilly, John L.Graham(2010) claimed that marketing is a business function requiring

high motivation regardless of the location of the practitioner. Marketing managers and sales

managers work hard, travel extensively, and have day-to-day business problems. One of the

most difficult task that sales manager faces is a motivation of foreign sales force. In order to

keep personnel functioning at an optimal level the manager should keep into consideration the

whole national differences. Individual incentives that work effectively for in U.S can fail

completely in other countries. Taking example from the book “International Marketing”

(Philip R.Cateora, Mary C.Gilly, John L.Graham), sales representatives were in Japanese and

American sales organizations were asked to allocate 100 points across an array of positional

rewards from work. Finally, the results were surprisingly similar. The only real difference

between the two groups was in social recognition. Japanese representatives rated it as more

important. However, the authors of the study, concluded that thought individual values for

rewards may be similar, but the social and competitive contexts still require different

motivational systems.

The biggest factor is the cultural differences that occur, which cause motivation and

behavior to vary from the domestic salesmen. Managers cannot motivate salespeople without

understanding their needs. People are usually much more diverse in their work values and

motivation factors that their managers suspect. Also the sales manager should identify the

individual needs of sales personnel. According...