Q&A: Manage an Unmanageable Salesforce?

by Dave Kahle

Q.  I’m frustrated.  My sales force just doesn’t seem to be motivated.  They agree with me at sales meetings, but then don’t follow through.  Any ideas?

           A.  Yes.  I just had a phone conversation with a client who had a familiar story to tell.  He had built his business on the model of an entrepreneurial sales force –give them a territory, pay them straight commission, and tell them they are in business for themselves, free to develop the customers they chose with the products they wanted. 

          And for a couple decades it had worked well.  The business grew and expanded.  More entrepreneurial salespeople were added, and the model was duplicated over and over again.

So far so good.  But then the growth in sales began to slow down.  Three flat or declining years in a row has caused this company president to question the status quo.

          Not only is business flat, but he’s unable to get his sales force to promote the lines that he wants to promote, he’s unable to get them to use some of the new technology that the company wants them to use, and he’s unable to get them to prospect for new customers.  Now he’s faced with an experienced sales force, who for the most part, are unmanageable.  

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The culprit?  A sales model that was built on the concept of the entrepreneurial salesperson.  There was a time when this model was effective, but in today’s competitive economy, there are serious difficulties with the entrepreneurial model.

          This model works best when the market is growing.  As long as there is more and more business out there to be had, the focus of most companies is to grab as much as they can, without caring a whole lot as to which customers and which products make up the business.  Employing a group of entrepreneurial salespeople reduces the demands on sales management so that the company’s executives can focus on building the infrastructure necessary to keep up with the consistent growth.

          As we all know, this was the case for most of the previous decade.  By shifting the responsibility for sales management onto the salespeople, however, you give up much of your management influence.  In effect, you cede management of the sales force to the salespeople.  And they generally make decisions that are in their own self interest, not yours.  The very concept of an entrepreneurial salesperson is... READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE