"We need to intensify assessments on salespeople; if they don't feel the pain, it won't be effective. To assess, they must feel it," the functional departments discussed at the meeting how to drive work forward.
Companies are imposing more and heavier assessments on frontline sales. In the past, meeting sales targets meant getting paid; now, even meeting targets doesn't guarantee full pay.
Salespeople find their jobs increasingly difficult, not only due to challenging sales targets but also endless forms, confusing assessments, countless meetings, and hard-to-remember rules...
Some say: Salespeople have long suffered under office staff.
Layered Burdens Restrict Sales Work
At the meeting, the marketing department discussed "how to use image materials effectively and authentically," with everyone contributing ideas.
"We should sign agreements with terminals to bind them," "We should assess salespeople to make them take it seriously," "Implement secondary acceptance: check at initial installation and recheck after 3 months"...
These strategies increased the workload for salespeople, and many, to avoid trouble, stopped applying for merchandising materials. In the short term, expenses decreased, but over time, due to lack of brand promotion at terminals, product competitiveness declined.
It would be more helpful to go to the market, find more effective promotion methods, and discuss two promotional activities with terminals.
To standardize sales management, functional departments designed a series of rules: terminal visit systems, expired product management, distributor management, expense management, merchandising management, and promotional activity management.
Moreover, to show innovation, they added more conditions each year. For example, when applying for expenses, salespeople must agree to terminal sales targets, key product targets, merchandising execution standards, and deductions for non-compliance.
As a result, terminals saw the agreement terms and shook their heads, saying, "If you don't want to give expenses, just say so; why all these twists and turns?" Salespeople felt helpless, replying, "It's company policy; otherwise, the expense application won't be approved."
In a large company, an office leader asked a salesperson, "Why don't you apply for promotional staff expenses?" The salesperson honestly replied, "The standards for promotional staff are too high. In our small county, where can we find girls with good figures, young age, and good looks to be our promoters, especially with low pay and many tasks?"
"Last year, we applied for two support staff, but at year-end settlement, the personnel costs were deducted because a certain indicator wasn't met," a distributor said angrily.
The distributor demanded the salesperson find a way to recover the deducted fees, while the company blamed the salesperson for careless expense applications. The salesperson was caught in the middle, suffering from both sides.
The marketing department is like this, the finance department is like this, and even the HR department is like this. In the end, all actions become shackles on salespeople, increasingly heavy, making it hard to breathe.
A veteran salesperson from a large company complained, "I really don't want to do this anymore. It's not about the salary; it's just too many tasks, all thankless."
Increasing Burden in the Name of PDCA
P (Plan), D (Do), C (Check), A (Act) is a logical workflow to drive work.
Every office position needs something to do and to show its value. Writing plans, collecting forms, tracking progress, and assessing results form a seemingly perfect PDCA loop, but in practice, it goes astray, causing severe burden on salespeople and worsening work outcomes.
1. Using "Reports" to Show Work
Market research requires forms; counting expired products requires forms; checking execution of various tasks requires forms, etc.
For refined management, forms become increasingly complex, often with hundreds of rows and dozens of columns, daunting to look at and time-consuming to fill.
"If the salesperson is familiar with the market, this form can be filled in minutes," the functional staff replied.
Newcomer Xiao Li was tortured by forms every time. Once, in a conversation with a colleague, he learned that the content in forms could be fabricated; there was no need to seriously go to the market to find answers, as that was tiring. If he filled in real numbers that didn't match leaders' expectations, he'd have to write reflections and improvements. But colleagues casually made up numbers that met leaders' expectations, not too outstanding nor too lagging.
The leader, holding the fabricated data, analyzed the market with righteous indignation, and thunderous applause broke out.
Especially in large companies, salespeople visiting terminals often receive calls from functional staff, mostly asking for forms: "Find a place quickly and fill in the form; the leader needs it right away."
Moreover, the office almost daily complains about salespeople: "Sales is easy; just meet sales targets. They can't do anything else. XX salesperson's forms are always a mess."
Making forms look beautiful has no meaning for market development. After collection, they are shelved, and the next form is collected, in a cycle.
2. Abuse of Assessments
Functional departments reviewed and found assessments effective in driving work, so they put more effort into assessments, leading to more and more detailed assessments.
Everything must be assessed: performance, distribution, process indicators, and even terminal visits.
Assessments may be effective within a certain scope and short term, but once abused, drawbacks become increasingly apparent.
To avoid being assessed, salespeople rush to complete daily visit counts and a series of process indicators. As a result, service quality at terminals declines, communication with customers decreases, new store expansion lags, and gradually, salespeople resist all tasks.
"There are too many assessments; I'm numb. Except for performance, I've basically given up on other assessments," a salesperson from a dairy company sighed.
"I met my sales target, but my salary was cut in half; I don't know where the deductions were."
Long-term assessments lead to burnout, making salespeople like driven bodies without souls or cohesion.
Out-of-Touch Directives
Most office staff lack sales experience and market understanding, so their plans often deviate from market reality. Especially newcomers, with no clue, modify previous plans and send them to salespeople for execution.
In a leading FMCG company, a group in the office developed a seemingly perfect plan that considered all markets and was logically consistent, but it couldn't be implemented at terminals, with very low target achievement.
The project leader complained first: "Salespeople have poor execution. I call every day, but progress just doesn't keep up."
In fact, salespeople don't need that seemingly perfect plan; they need resources based on market reality to fight for the market and tools that can be quickly implemented.
Often, high-profile, high-target, high-standard execution becomes a bargaining chip for functional departments to curry favor with senior leaders.
Even if results are often messy with extremely low achievement, salespeople become scapegoats for inaction.
Later, to meet targets, salespeople had to falsify data.
"We are in a weak market; the company's XX target is too high to achieve. The reported data must have some water. If we report real data, we'll have to reflect and be criticized," a salesperson sighed.
Unrealistic plans consume salespeople's energy, hurt customer confidence, and miss market opportunities.
Everyone knows work should be based on market reality, but often it isn't.
The main reason is: Those who make plans in the office don't personally participate in terminal sales execution, don't know the difficulties encountered during execution, and take 'ideal results' as 'targets' without thinking.
Everyone Acts Like a Leader, Passing Problems to Salespeople
In major FMCG companies, almost any office staff can direct salespeople; if they don't comply, "assessment" is used.
If forms aren't filled as required, even an office clerk will sharply criticize a salesperson: "You can't even submit a form; I've taught you several times."
Every time office staff go to the market, salespeople must accompany them. During visits, they point out various problems and instruct salespeople to rectify them. If rectification isn't adequate, they use the "assessment" weapon again.
What's more exasperating is that factory workers also consider themselves leaders of salespeople.
"Sell whatever goods we have; if salespeople can't sell, it's their poor ability," a small factory supervisor said confidently.
They speak without understanding, thinking market matters are trivial.
When product quality issues arise, the factory manager makes excuses: "Last time, the same issue occurred in XX market, and the salesperson solved it themselves. Can't you solve such a small matter?"
"The gap in sales ability is quite large; they push everything to the factory. Sales requires flexibility; without flexibility, how can you do well?" The factory manager spoke plausibly, but he had never worked a day in sales.
Problems recur, and they just say "Report according to the process" or "We are verifying"... and then nothing.
Without truly helping salespeople solve problems, blaming them for all market issues ultimately hurts salespeople's confidence, partners' interests, and consumers' trust.
Functional Positions Are at Risk
The market environment is deteriorating; no matter how hard salespeople try, they can't meet targets.
Functional staff are increasingly anxious, not about how to help sales development and boost sales in the most direct and effective way, but about designing more forms, more complex assessment systems, and more frequent inspections. Treating work processes and institutional plans as their own achievements is putting the cart before the horse.
In the end, when the company fails to meet performance targets, the layoff knife first cuts toward functional staff, who don't understand why they were laid off even at the last moment.