Consider the challenges for current and future business managers: working with increasingly diverse customers who — because of an array of choices — are increasingly demanding, addressing age-old efficiency and effectiveness issues, and dealing with constant competition from international markets.

Dr. Doug Vorhies, assistant professor of marketing in the University of Mississippi School of Business Administration, examines such factors and others that impact performance and competitive advantage and influence management practices.

“My research is focused on trying to benchmark marketing practices, so business and industry professionals will know methods for improving performance,” Vorhies says. “With all the improvement that has been done, industry professionals don’t benchmark marketing very much. By trying to extend that thinking into marketing, it provides a way of improving the processes, or capabilities, businesses use to market their products, which should result in better performance.”

On the sales side, the UM professor’s research concentrates on the same aspects but at more of a microlevel.

“If you can improve the way a company is selling its products, then you also can improve efficiency and effectiveness,” says Vorhies. “A company can spend less resources basically trying to get the same result.”

And where marketing and sales environments are concerned, the trend is toward a model of building long-term partnerships and relationships instead of one-time transactions.

“The movement is from outcome-based sales to activity-based sales management,” Vorhies explains. “In an outcome-based model, all many managers consider is whether or not the employee made a sale. “It’s recognized that with the activity-based model there are a lot of things influencing the sale and then long-term, whether or not we can develop an ongoing relationship with the customer.”

For example, a customer makes a purchase, but the order doesn’t get shipped on time. The sales person, however, does a admirable job of finding out what the problem is and figuring out how to expedite the order, such as changing the way the product is shipped to avoid inconvenience to the customer. Under the former outcome-based model, the sales person may have viewed the situation as: “Once you’ve signed the order, I don’t care what happens. It’s someone else’s problem.”

“If the sales person does a good job of servicing the account after the sale is made, it can lead to continued purchases in the future,” the UM professor says.

The relationship focus, in addition, includes business-to-business types of relationships were there is actually some consultative selling. The sales person sets a goal of understanding, for example, how a supplier of goods or services fits into the customer’s overall business plan, and how the sales person can support that.

Vorhies — whose research appears in such industry fixtures as Journal of Marketing, Decision Sciences, the EuropeanJournal of Marketing, and the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management — examines the changing role of sales managers in activity-based models.

“Managers have to change the way they think,” he says. “They just can’t pound their sales force with ‘all I care about is closing sales.’ Sales managers may need additional training to take on a coaching role: ‘How many people are you contacting? What kinds of problems are you encountering? How can we solve the customer’s problem.’ Members of the sales force may not actually need additional training, but the focus of what’s important to the company definitely has to change. Frequently, this means altering the compensation system to reward activities that lead to strong relationships with customers, instead of just rewarding sales made.

“Companies moving to the activity-based model are seeing some solid positive effects,” Vorhies says. “Situations develop where firms can maintain or even reduce marketing spending because they are keeping their accounts longer.”

Conducting the research — including a recent study to see what influences businesses when the economy takes a down swing — also makes an impact on the students Vorhies teaches.

“Our students need a strong understanding of what they are going to see when they get into management,” says Vorhies, a 10-year academician who has the added advantage of personal experience as a product manager, sales force manager and strategic planner in the business world. “I give students theories and reinforce the theories through applications, and through sharing my own observations, experiences, and research findings.”

When Vorhies is examining .the factors (job satisfaction, motivation, compensation, and training) influencing the effectiveness of sales people and the overall sales force or advising that businesses and industries should aggressively market their products during sluggish economic times, he is another leader in the UM School of Business Administration firmly connected to commerce