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This is the 15th in a number of articles serializing The Sales Force — Working With Reps by Charles Cohon, MANA’s president and CEO. The entire book may be found in the member area of MANA’s website.

Ruth Anderson’s schedule during the workweek was hectic, so the three agreed to meet in Troothe’s conference room on a Saturday morning. Harold had arrived early with pastries from his favorite bakery, and he had covered the walls of the conference room with large sheets of plain white paper so that the ideas they generated could be captured easily. Jim had brought his wife up to date on the problem they wanted to solve, so as soon as the three had shared initial pleasantries, they were ready to start.

Harold stood up. He had a thick marker in his right hand to record the group’s comments. He uncapped it but said nothing, which Ruth took as a signal to start.

“If I understand the problem, it really boils down to how the current salaried sales force system is structured to make a tradeoff between cooperation and greed,” she said. “Jim’s salaried sales force is structured to maximize cooperation among members of the sales force, and it’s been very successful in accomplishing that goal. As a byproduct, however, it’s also made the sales force very accepting of any but the most egregious errors made by management — they’re so obliging that when management fouls up they quietly do the best they can with the cards management deals to them.”

Jim nodded, and added, “That’s right. Our goal today is to find a way to create some useful tension between the sales force and management without disturbing the level of cooperation the members of our sales force now extend to each other.”

Harold said, “I know it’s a little early to recap, but let me see if I can condense this into a bullet point or two that I can write on these sheets. We’re balancing greed against cooperation, and it sounds like we need to incorporate elements of both into a successful system.”

Harold wrote the word “Greed” on the first sheet, underlined it and then wrote underneath it, “Commission-based” and “Incentive for strong feedback.” On the next sheet he wrote “Cooperation,” underlined it and wrote beneath it, “Salary-based,” “Salespeople work together” and “Feedback missing.” Harold capped the marker and looked at the two sheets, folding his arms across his chest.

“There is something about our headings that’s bothering me,” he said. “When we use the headings ‘cooperation’ and ‘greed’ it looks like we’re comparing cooperation, which is something good, against greed, which is something bad. The whole reason we’re having this conversation is because we’ve decided that for the health of the company we need to encourage some greed. I think the negative connotation of the word greed is going to make it hard to have an objective discussion.”

Jim and Ruth nodded, then Ruth said, “We’re probably better off to use ‘competition’ instead of ‘greed’ as the opposite of cooperation. There isn’t anything inherently negative about the word competition — Troothe competes every day with other companies, and free market economies have their basis in competition.”

Harold crossed out the word “Greed” and wrote “Competition” at the top of that page before continuing. “So we’re looking for a way to balance cooperation and competition. Jim, the sales force currently operates at a very high level of cooperation. How much of that cooperation are you willing to give up to get the feedback you need?” Harold moved to a blank sheet and drew a line with arrows at each end.

“Let’s say there is a continuum with -10 as pure competition and +10 as pure cooperation,” Harold continued. “Where would you say our salespeople would fall on this line right now?”

“They’re pretty enthusiastic about helping each other,” Jim said. “I’d have to put them about +8 or +9.”

“Then the question I have to ask you,” Harold said, “is are you willing to move toward +5 or even zero and give up some of that enthusiasm to get the feedback you want? Can we move back in the direction of competition with some sort of hybrid salary plus commission system? Are you willing to go to a point where, although our people still work together, they do so unenthusiastically, or even reluctantly?”

Jim shook his head. “I don’t think there is such a thing as cooperation at the point of a gun.”

Harold interrupted, “I remember a quote from Dwight Eisenhower: ‘You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.’”

Jim picked up his thought where he’d left off. “The whole point of cooperation is that our salespeople come up with innovative, creative ways to collaborate — even volunteering to help each other. Without their enthusiasm we’d lose that creativity. The many ways our sales force has invented to work together were created because they chose to look for ways to be team players. This has been a huge benefit to Troothe. I am not prepared to sacrifice that to get the feedback I want. What I’d like to see us come up with is a way to get salaried employees to selectively behave like entrepreneurs or commissioned employees. I want our sales force to become vocal advocates for our customers while still engaging in high-level cooperative activities among themselves. How do we get employees to behave like entrepreneurs, but in one aspect of their job only? To use an example, let’s consider our own salesperson June Calloway who works for us on a salaried basis. How can we get her to complain like she would have as a commissioned salesperson back at Bigglie while continuing to cooperate enthusiastically with her coworkers on a salaried basis here?”

“That’s a thorny question, Jim,” said Ruth. “I don’t know if you can pull an employee in two directions like that and somehow have them act like a Troothe salaried employee most of the time, except in the one case where you want them to behave as a Bigglie commissioned employee. My instinct tells me it’d be like trying to set a thermostat for ‘hot, yet cold.’ If you try to get hot and cold at the same time you end up with lukewarm, which probably is not an acceptable alternative in this situation.”

“I’m not saying it can’t be done,” Ruth continued, “but I think we should consider that ‘hot, yet cold’ may not be a possibility and brainstorm other alternatives to get you the feedback you want. Why don’t we do some real brainstorming about the sales channel in general instead of sticking strictly to the problem you’ve identified? Let’s talk about everything you think you might want from the sales force that you’re not getting, and see where that takes us.”

“Fair enough,” Jim replied. “Harold, let’s start my wish list on a new sheet and write ‘Feedback’ at the top.”

To be continued next month.

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