Rambo: The Salesperson in the Field

In every organisation, the inefficiencies and the incompetence and indiscretions at the top affect the man at the field the most.

The Lords and the Commons

Typically, in most organisations, sales-cum-distribution is divested from marketing-cum-branding. In some organisations, those in the former category, tongue-in-cheek, are called the Commons and those in the latter, mostly located at the corporate headquarters, are called the Lords. It is not unusual that the Commons and the Lords do not see eye to eye. The Lords have the blessings of the King, the CEO, and hence enjoy greater power and say in what percolates down the organisational channel. Not atypically, career-growth for a person in the Corporate Office is faster than for his counterpart at the field. This dichotomy is safeguarded, strengthened and reinforced by those who are beneficiaries of this system, and the result is the simmering anger, sometimes sabotage and many times high attrition among those in the field.

The John Rambo and the Colonel Samuel Trautman

There is this lonely crusader in the field in every organisation, who battles for his company alone, staying away from home most often, dealing with constantly complaining customers such as the channel members and sometimes the influencers and at times the end users. He is the field salesperson. He is in close touch with the market; he knows the pulse of the customers and consumers; and he stands directly at the firing line of competition in the battlefield. If anything goes astray, he takes the brunt of the mess, answering questions of the irate customers, spending his precious time in clearing the mess and salvaging the situation. He is the angry young man with the slinger; he is the John Rambo on sales field, cut loose. He knows all the tricks of the trade; he has the greatest survival instinct; and, he feels constantly harassed about every small aspect of his work, career and life. And, the man with all the cares, concerns, worries, trepidations and the ability to bring him under control is the Col. Sam Trautman of the company—the boss of Rambo—the Field Sales Manager. He is sandwiched between the undiminished anger of the field salesperson and the perennial distrust of the corporate office, acting as a cushion to both. One does not come across many textbooks that touch upon the continuous angst that he works under. His melancholy has to be experienced, to be understood. Here is an attempt to this portray it.

Role of a Field Sales Manager

A Filed Sales Manager’s role is quite complex. His job involves managing both the supply system and the demand system for the company. He stands at the mid-point of the marriage of these two systems. In addition, he is accountable to the Corporate Office for the profitability of his entire territory (See Diagram 1). His job, inter alia, comprises of,

1.       Planning and execution of capturing a territory

2.       Recruiting and training of field salespersons

3.       Selecting and engaging the services of distributing agents

4.       Monitoring and motivating the field sales persons and distributing agents

5.       Planning and placing indents for the products

6.       Maintaining and housekeeping of inventory

7.       Planning, organising and managing physical distribution

8.       Planning and executing promotional activities to create push

9.       Gathering market-intelligence and pass it upwards to the corporate heads

Briefly, his role can be classified under a few dimensions as follows:

·         People, Process, Product (3-P)

·         Man, Material, Machinery, Method and Money (5-M)

·         Structure, Conduct and Outcome (SCO)

·         Customer, Competition and Company (3C)

A. 3-P Dimensions

The 3-P dimensions classify a field manager’s work into People, Process and Product. All the three dimensions are important for him to be effective in his role. The three dimensions involve as below:

o   People: Recruiting, Training, Motivating, Feedback & Counselling

o   Process: Planning, Executing, Monitoring, Controlling, Incentives, Penalties

o   Product: Planning, Logistics, Promotion, Market-hygiene

When the sales manager misses people, evidently, he is saddled with an unhappy salesforce and attrition is imminent.

When the sales manager misses process, he engages in crisis management repeatedly.

When the sales manager misses product, he ends up with dissatisfied customers due to product failures and mismatch of needs and deliveries (See Diagram 2).

B. 5-M Framework

Though this framework emerged for shop-floor activities, it is equally applicable to sales management too. (See Diagram 3)

Man: The sales manager has to manage, monitor, train and counsel the work force in his sales and support team. One of his critical problem is retention since good quality salespersons are in high demand and carry premium in the job-market. Mana-management is of utmost criticality to his functions.

Material: Receiving, warehousing, maintaining, transporting and accounting the stocks without damage and spoilage is a part of the sales manager’s job. Though most of the companies outsource these activities, the onus still falls on the field sales manager, as the wellness of the stocks is important to his sales efforts.

Machinery: The sales manager may be required to manage the upkeep of transportation machinery—through agents, sometimes—and warehousing facilities not only with his company but also with his channel partners. These activities are essential to ensure that the stocks are well handled and the distribution-cum-delivery works are smoothly done.

Method: It is an important part of the sales manager’s work. This involves the governance process, delegation of authority, information flows, reporting and monitoring systems, incentives and penalties and so forth.

Money: Needless to elaborate, his role involves cash collection, safe accounting and disbursements. Remember, sales is the only cash-generating function; the rest are all cost centers.

C. SCO Framework

The Structure-Conduct-Outcome framework suggests that when there is no consonance between the intended purpose of the system and the conduct, the outcome is not as per expectations (See Diagram (4).

Structure: Here, the term structure is used loosely to include both organisational structure and its systems. The organisational structure of relating, reporting and controlling, the methods of exercising those linkages, monitoring, procedural practices, rules, methods, cultural eco-system, incentives, penalties and such fall under this category. An organisation’s structure emerges and evolves over time from various needs, beliefs and practices of its stakeholders.

Conduct: This includes how people conduct themselves in relation to the procedures, rules, vis-à-vis others formally and informally, that is, in summary in the context of structure. Such conduct is envisaged in the structure, some clearly spelt out in the code of conduct and some in culture. When any constituent(s) deviates from the envisaged conduct, it causes a dissonance.

Outcome: The outcomes are tangible, intangible, substantive, emotional, cultural, short-term and long-term.

One may expect that there is a one-to-one correspondence between structure and conduct. On the contrary, they are independent factors, influencing the outcomes differently under different combinations (See Diagram 5)

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(i)     When the structure is appropriate, that is in accordance with the envisaged objectives of the organisation, and when the conduct is appropriate, that is in accordance with the structure, then the outcome is optimal in terms of tangibility, substantiveness, emotion and culture both in the short term and in the long term.

(ii)    When the structure is inappropriate and the conduct is appropriate to that structure, the organisation is doomed to fail soon. This generally is the case with opportunistic sales organisation, known as “fly-by-night-salesmen”. It leaves customers cheated, company with a poor brand image and possible litigations.

(iii)  When the structure is appropriate but the conduct is inappropriate, the outcome is one of chaos, firefighting, lost sales, dissatisfied customers and so forth. Sales can become unpredictable and sporadic and there is no steadiness in the organisation’s functioning.

(iv)  When the structure is inappropriate and the conduct is inappropriate to that structure, it implies that people are conducting themselves better than what the structure envisages; but since not everybody will do this, there will be mixed outcomes with partial good performance and partial poor performance. The organisation witnesses political pulls and confusion. Remember, as Peter Senge says, “Put in a system, people tend to behave systemically.” Hence, those who try to conduct themselves well despite a poor structure will ultimately leave the organisation, being unable to fall in line with the poor structure and Gresham’s Law will come in to work: Bad folks drive gook folks out of a social system.

D. The 3-C Framework

The 3-C framework in sales management is a slight modification of its namesake in marketing in terms of the effects (See Diagram 6).

The diagram is relatively easy to comprehend and is  self explanatory in the sense that when all the 3 Cs intersect, Sales Manager is effective. When any one is left out in favour of the other two, there are undesirable outcomes such as poor bottomline, lost battles and  trial & error.

As always, I make the caveat that to understand the effectiveness of Sales Manager’s role, one may use a combination of the frameworks as diagnostics. However, when the FSM meanders or squanders in his role, the Rambo of the organisation is affected most. When he goes, with him go a set of knowledge, market-relationship and goodwill. The company has to reinvest in establishing everything from the start, reinventing the wheel. However, most organisations do not understand the importance of Col. Trautman and John Rambo;  the corporate heads live in their ivory tower, making hypothetical pictures of ground realities and formulating policies and strategies. At best, the corporate leadership in Marketing would allow sharing information by the fieldforce; the men in the field are seldom a part of marketing-decision making. It is the exclusive and elite prerogative of those in the citadel. Rambos come; Rambos go; but Marketing slumbers on forever.