CHAPTER 15
TIME, AND TERRITORY, AND SELF-MANAGEMENT: KEYS TO SUCCESS
COMMENTS ON CHAPTER 15 SALES APPLICATION QUESTIONS
1. Traveling can be a large part of a salesperson’s job. This means time not spent in the office. Thus,
technology can be an efficient tool for communication. Scheduling efficiency can be maximized by
3. Please see chapter for elements of time and territory management.
4. The undifferentiated selling approach says that you sell all customers the same. The account
differently.
5. A. Break-even for a year would be:
Sales = $500,000
Gross profit % (175,000 500,000) = 35%
Direct salesperson’s cost $35,000
direct costs for the year.
B. Break-even for the day is:
If the salesperson works 48 out of 52 weeks or 240 days each year, works 5 days a week, 8
The break-even volume per hour is: $18.22 = ($35,000 1,920)
C. Break-even each sales call: $83.25 = ($416.05 5)
sales and profits.
allocation.
do.
9. Scheduling refers to establishing a fixed time (day and hour) when the salesperson will be at a
COMMENTS ON CASES
Case 15-1: Your Selling Day: A Time and Territory Game
1. This game is designed to be conducted in a lab setting.
2. Download the game from http://people.tamu.edu/~c-futrell/ and install it on the requisite
3. In this game students are required to visit 16 customers over the space of two days. Students can
4. The game can be conducted in two ways:
customer.
5. Technical instructions on how to play the computer version of the game can be located on the
Day 1
Customer Sales Travel Sales Time
Number = Potential Time + Time = (Minutes)
Home
E = $ 2,000 1 x 15 + 30 = 45
L = 12,000 2 x 15 + 30 = 60
C = 6,000 1 x 15 + 30 = 45
M = 8,000 1 x 15 + 30 = 45
540/60 = 9 hours
Day 2
Customer Sales Travel Sales Time
Number = Potential Time + Time = (Minutes)
Home
I = $ 1,000 3 x 15 + 30 = 75
G = 4,000 1 x 15 + 30 = 45
J = 1,000 1 x 15 + 30 = 45
405/60 = 6 hours 45 minutes
Day 1
Traveling Salesperson Problem
DFHA
DFHA
Instructor: An industrial engineering master’s student working for
me says that this exercise is a classic in his major. IE people
specialize in scheduling. I asked him to explain it to you. This is
what he said about the exercise. NOTE: this explanation is for your
background only. It does NOT apply to this exercise.
The Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP) is a deceptively simple
combinatorial problem. It can be stated very simply. A salesperson spends
Many TSP’s are symmetric — that is, for any two cities A and B, the distance
from A to B is the same as that from B to A. The same tour length will be
A salesperson has to visit “n” cities and return to his city of origin. Each city
You are a salesperson, and you must visit 20 cities spread across North
The answer is that there is no simple answer. Reasonable people will make a
reasonable choice and accept a reasonably short path.
However, there is only one way to 5nd the absolute shortest path, and that is
How many orderings are there? They can be counted this way:
For the first city to visit you have 20 choices.
For the second city to visit you have only 19 choices (because you can’t
orderings which equals
2,432,902,008,176,640,000 possible orderings. Wow!
This number is so big that even if your computer could check 1 million
orderings every second it would still take 77,000 years to check them all!
1. Develop a table showing a salesperson’s call cycle using the given call frequency patterns.
2. This table shows how the call cycles for this example (territory) will be made up.