Progressive Distributor - Salespeople rate their job satisfaction

Salespeople rate their job satisfaction

Distributor salespeople say their employers don’t give them enough coaching and constructive criticism

by Rich Vurva

Most distributor salespeople are challenged by their jobs and plan to stay with their current employers. But according to a recent survey of distributor salespeople conducted by Progressive Distributor and Benfield Consulting Group of Chicago, salespeople are dissatisfied with the amount of coaching and constructive criticism they receive from management. A sizable percentage also say they’re interested in looking for new employment opportunities.

The survey of industrial and construction supply distributor salespeople, conducted in September 2006, determined that 55 percent of distributor salespeople are challenged by what they do. But will their apparent job satisfaction translate into long-term happiness with their current companies? For more than 25 percent of respondents, the answer is no.

Asked to describe their future plans, 40 percent said they’re content with their current position and have no plans to change anytime soon, while 35 percent said they are seeking internal promotions. But 16 percent admitted they are seeking a position outside of the industry in another line of work, and 9 percent plan to stay within the industry, but would prefer working for a different company.

Just because someone says they’re open to the idea of a job change in the future, doesn’t mean they plan to jump ship tomorrow. But when more than one-fourth of the people surveyed express a desire to work for another company or in a new industry altogether, it should serve as a heads-up to employers to find out what more they can do to retain their current employees.

How to keep workers happy
Other findings from the exclusive survey reveal areas where distributors might want to focus greater attention in an effort to boost job satisfaction among salespeople. For example, about two-thirds of salespeople agreed that they receive a substantial amount of product training, understand new products and their applications and have a plan to sell them before they are launched, and are encouraged by their employers to review new product technologies.

But when it comes to being coached by their bosses and receiving constructive criticism and input on how to do their jobs better, many salespeople believe management falls short. More than half say their managers fail to regularly coach them on how to maximize their usage of time and their sales contribution; 43 percent say their sales managers fail to travel with them to observe and help with their sales approach; and 44 percent say their managers don’t provide constructive criticism and input on how to improve their job performance.

“This is not surprising,” says Scott Benfield of Benfield Consulting. “Many sales managers have given up trying to travel and coach sellers while in the field. The problem is that traditional geographic deployment and bonus on margin dollars largely don’t work anymore. That makes traveling with salespeople a low win proposition.”

Distributors may need to look for new ways of deploying sales forces and defining roles before coaching and mentoring begin anew, Benfield says.

“I have a client who is sending out sales managers to coach sellers on how to sell commodity products. So far, it’s not working, and the reason is pretty obvious. A commodity is differentiated only by price. When a sales manager coaches a seller on a commodity, the expensive transaction becomes more expensive,” Benfield says.

The marketplace won’t pay for a seller much less a seller with coaching costs included. The strategy is dead weight for the organization because it hurts profits.

“My advice was to transact the commodities via e-commerce, trim the redundant sellers, and redeploy the better sellers in new roles,” he says.

Inadequate planning
The survey also revealed that salespeople are not being adequately challenged to offer their input and plan their territories. When asked if they prepare an annual sales plan with key product and customer strategies, 42 percent said they only somewhat agreed, somewhat disagreed, or disagreed that they participated in such planning.

“Selling is one of the most expensive functions in distribution,” Benfield says. “If you cannot agree to write an annual territory plan and work the plan, there is a much reduced probability that your sales effort will be successful.”

When asked about territory maintenance strategies of reviewing and trading out accounts, 40 percent of respondents say this never or seldom happens. Asked if they relinquish accounts if they are too distant to call on, 43 percent answered seldom or never. Finally, asked if an account much reach a minimum sales amount in revenues before it becomes a permanent part of the territory, 42 percent said seldom or never.

“You simply cannot do more with less while having salespeople call on a bunch of small accounts. That is what is implied if 42 percent of respondents don’t have a minimum sales revenue before the account is included in their territory,” Benfield says.

In a recent review for a client, Benfield discovered that more than half of the average outside sales accounts could not produce a positive activity profit. In other words, it cost more to serve the account than sales justified. Why assign a salesperson to activity negative accounts?

“Most distributors allocate territories by total margin dollars, which allows the salesperson to earn a certain industry wage. Second, most sales managers and distribution execs are sales-friendly and don’t want to trim back sellers or supplant them with less costly methods of solicitation. So, nothing changes, except the profits of the organization get squeezed because sales costs are too high,” he says.

Finally, asked if their salary and bonus or commission plan “motivates me to sell more,” 43 percent answered sometimes, seldom or never.

“In our experience, compensation is overrated in its ability to motivate and drive top-line sales,” Benfield says. “If you have salespeople doing the wrong things, allocated in meaningless ways like geography or coached on commodity sales, and paying them for selling activity negative accounts, then how would compensation help? The structural problems can’t be fixed by a new comp plan.”