Page 164 - HBR's 10 Must Reads - On Sales

How to Really Motivate

B
Salespeople

by Doug J. Chung

BEFORE I BECAME A BUSINESS school professor, I worked as a manage-
ment consultant. One engagement in particular had a profound influ-
ence on my career. The project involved working with the Asia-based
sales force of a global consumer products company. This company
practiced “route sales,” which meant reps spent their days visiting
mom-and-pop convenience stores, servicing accounts. One thing
about the organization surprised me: Its sales managers spent inor-
dinate time listening to the reps complain about their compensation.
The complaints were based on what the reps saw as a myriad of
problems. Their quotas were set too high, so they couldn’t possibly
reach them. Or their territory was subpar, limiting their ability to
sign new accounts. Sometimes the complaints focused on fairness:
A rep who was hitting his quotas and making decent money would
want a manager to do something about a “lazy” colleague who was
earning outsize pay simply because he had a good territory. Imagine
any conceivable complaint a salesperson might have about pay, and
I guarantee that sales managers at my client’s company had heard it.
The reps weren’t the only ones obsessed with the compensation
system. The company liked to play around with the system’s compo-
nents to try to find better ways to motivate reps and boost revenue,
or to increase the return on the money it spent paying salespeople—
a large part of its marketing budget. This company’s sales comp

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