Salespeople as Customers?!

Have you ever thought about your sales staff as customers? Henry Ford thought of his employees as customers for his cars. He wanted to pay them enough and charge the buyers so little that his employees could afford to buy the cars that they made. However, what I am suggesting here is that we should go even farther with the sales staff – we should literally treat them as customers of their company’s management.

Many sales people are incented to sell. They often make a percentage of their income based upon how well they do in sales. There was a recent Dilbert cartoon strip (2004) which focused on strategies for selling without a sales staff. The pointy haired boss thought he could reduce headcount by eliminating sales. All he needed was for marketing to find a way to get customers to select their products, pay for them and pick them up at the warehouse. Obviously, sales staff is needed to meet customers’ needs.

Some companies have taken the idea of treating sales staff like customers to heart. There are benefits to following a robust process for developing customer-centric products and services (see the stiehlworks.com). What we have done in consulting for these companies is to follow the same process for developing ideas to improve the performance of sales staff.

For one manufacturer of durable goods, we conducted a "Voice of the Salesperson/Employee" study. The resulting internal predictive metrics and survey results were used to generate strategies for improving sales success. In this company, several key strategies emerged which lead to a tremendous reduction in the time required to track and report sales progress. The sales tools were integrated and updated. The result was a 25% increase in sales without hiring additional sales people!

A robust system of metrics, surveys and analysis had been created which could be perpetuated. Employee satisfaction improved significantly, as the sales staff felt that management was listening to them and being responsive.

This company had learned how to treat their sales force as customers of management and management decisions. The management saw that treating sales people like customers resulted in better service to the customers and higher customer satisfaction scores as well.
Treating their sales staff as customers of management and management systems resulted in increased revenues and profits for the company as well, and that is the mission of the sales staff, isn’t it?