Any study of the individual sales people and their performance needs to be done with care, because the very act of studying the wrong thing in the wrong way can lead to flawed management thinking, bad decisions and ineffective policies, such as manipulation of quotas, rewards, and support processes.
Some sales management situations are naturally more “people equivalent” meaning the right (uniform) activity and skill, placed in any region or situation, predictably drives sales results. Not all sales management situations are this predictable however, nor ought they be. Many will find different sales skills fitting differently in different territories, and others will find their organizational decisions and supporting processes being the Red X. Most sales organizations will face a mix of home office practices, regional variations and varying salesperson strengths and weaknesses, all of which interact with eachother. Often these interactions are more significant than either part separately. In sales mangement you are usually studying a holistic organizism, not just a pile of disjointed parts that are easily manipulated, such as what might be found on an assembly line.
I have consulted with many sales organizations that have been devastated by their management’s rush to False Attribution (blame) along with the dysfunctional thinking and policies that followed. In these instances, the fixes usually began with the sound holistic thinking in the minds of home office management followed by a realignment of central sales mangement processes (both aimed at better supporting the outside salespeople). Lastly, came the review of sales person performance. Usually by this point individual sales person issues tended to be the most minor and most easily corrected of the issues identified.
Salespeople are hunters, not assembly line workers. If one is not careful one can easily turn well cooridinated “wolfpacks” into “lone wolfs” who become “ordertakers,” “skimmers,” and “credit takers.” Then you WILL need a six-sigma sales turnaround project.
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