Strategic Workforce Planning and sales force : a demographic approach to productivity

Marie Doumic (1) , Mathieu Mezache (2, 3) , Benoît Perthame (2, 3) , Edouard Ribes (4) , Delphine Salort (5)

1 MAMBA - Modelling and Analysis for Medical and Biological Applications
2 LJLL - Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions
3 MAMBA - Modelling and Analysis for Medical and Biological Applications
4 IRSEM - Institut de recherche stratégique de l'Ecole militaire
5 LCQB - Biologie Computationnelle et Quantitative = Laboratory of Computational and Quantitative Biology

Sales force Return on Investment (ROI) valuation with marketing mix frameworks is nowadays common. Sizing discussions then generally follow based on market data and business assumptions. Yet, according to our knowledge, little has been done to embed sales force demographic data (age/experience, tenure, gender etc...) as well as dynamics (especially turnover) in order to investigate the impact of the salesforce characteristics on sales. This paper illustrates such an attempt. It shows that sales force ROI valuation can benefit from a correction on turnover and that optimizing a sales rep hiring policy can unleash additional ROI points. The results are yet heavily dependent in the data structure of the study and their generalization would have to be investigated.

Mots clés: Workforce planning; Marketing mix; Learning curve; Optimal policies; Sales force turnover; Structured population dynamics

Domaines: Economies et finances; Démographie; Equations aux dérivées partielles [math.AP]

Marie Doumic, Mathieu Mezache, Benoît Perthame, Edouard Ribes, Delphine Salort. Strategic Workforce Planning and sales force : a demographic approach to productivity. 2017. ⟨hal-01449812⟩