Marc Wouters

2015

Sales and marketing research have developed the concepts of outcome-based and behavior-based salesforce control systems as well as sales organization effectiveness. A lot has been written about the relationship between them; but only within the last fifteen to twenty years, more attention has been given to the question how to measure sales performance and sales organization effectiveness. Metrics have been suggested, but not yet arranged in an intuitive framework. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) provides such a framework, yet mainly for production environments. This paper examines (1) how the BSC can be used to organize and display sales metrics, (2) which role it can play in improving the internal communication of an organization, and (3) how existing information can be used instead of building a new system from scratch. Those questions are approached by conducting a case study at the subsidiary responsible for sales and after sales of a German car manufacturer. Results differ in some aspects from the literature or support new and under-researched theories, and extend it in other aspects. Ideas for future research about sales metrics and coordination in performance measurement system introductions are given.