When Your Sales Force Can Just Say 'No'.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: Brief Article

As I watch companies in every field mount initiatives to energize and enable their sales forces, it has become clear that these companies are shooting at a moving target. Our clients are dealing less and less with captive employees or passive recipients of the newest training or latest technology. More and more they are expending their efforts on a sales force that can just say "No."

In some cases, that is because they are in agent or dealer relationships. In others, it is because an abundance of sales jobs means employees are no longer daunted or stigmatized by the prospect of serial employment.

But they can say "no" because they own more of what it takes to drive sales. Perhaps they own the customer information. Perhaps they own the channel. In many cases, they own the vital link--the customer relationship.

Finding common ground

That means their companies need to be better than ever at finding ways to make their free agents say "yes"--to find common ground for their mutual customer relationship efforts.

To succeed, they need to understand how the motives and incentives of their free agents differ from those of a traditional sales force. In all of these arrangements, the company has less influence in producing the desired result. They have fewer levers to pull--are less able to rely on traditional levers like pay or other incentives. They are more obliged to create a win/win situation.

Take the automobile-dealer model: For years, automakers and other companies with large dealer networks have provided their dealers with traditional benefits of the relationship: the vehicles, the vehicle brand, advertising, product design, buyer incentive programs and dealer incentives.

In return, dealers have provided automakers with local outlets, sales skills and customer relationships.

Automakers, many with sophisticated databases warehouses and data mining capabilities, lock at their dealers and see vast pools of customer information that could be mined for better tapping into customer potential. They see dealers without the budget, technology or database management expertise to fully utilize this information. And they see loyal, satisfied...