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A well-known company's marketing management department, aiming to better manage frontline sales staff and have them create higher value for the company, planned to introduce a telecom GPS positioning system to be installed on every salesperson's smartphone to track and locate their daily routes. After confirming the authenticity of this information with a marketing manager of the company, I predicted that the company would rapidly lose a large number of salespeople within a period of time, and new recruits would also be reluctant to join the company.

Sure enough, when I returned to Beijing from a business trip recently and met this manager again, asking about recent business conditions, he looked distressed. Nearly 30% of excellent employees had already resigned, and another 30% had clearly or implicitly indicated they would leave. He asked me why this happened. Shouldn't salespeople be managed?

I answered him with three reasons:

Sense of Trust Management must first be built on mutual trust. Installing GPS positioning systems on salespeople's phones and monitoring their market visits in real time tells them that the company no longer trusts them, hence the monitoring. As the ancient saying goes: "If you suspect someone, don't use them; if you use them, don't suspect them." Since the fundamental trust is gone, why should employees stay? And if the company no longer trusts employees, HR should simply dismiss them directly, rather than "disgusting" them with such tactics to force them to leave.

Sense of Security Everyone wants to feel safe and not have their privacy spied on. The most indispensable tool for modern people is the mobile phone, which they carry everywhere. Installing GPS on phones means salespeople become open terminals, with their entire routes fully exposed to the company. Perhaps the company thinks it only monitors during working hours and doesn't interfere outside work, but for salespeople, it feels like there's always an eye watching them no matter what they do, leading to a severe lack of security. Just like in the movie "I Want You to Be Good," surveillance and tracking eventually break up a loving couple.

Freedom Sales is not rigid and monotonous; it is more about freedom and spontaneity. Even routine visits can have "unexpected situations" at any time, such as terminal customers calling urgently for products, consumer complaints, etc., which need immediate handling. However, in the system's planned visit route, there may be significant deviations, leading to questioning, explanations, and verification procedures that exhaust salespeople. Perhaps the company's reason is to ensure salespeople don't do unrelated things during work. But it's unnecessary. Sales is a result-oriented job where sales performance is the ultimate assessment indicator. If you overemphasize process detail monitoring, you deviate from the essence of sales. Also, you require salespeople to be 100% dedicated during working hours, but when you ask them to work overtime at any time, have you considered paying them overtime?

The sales manager was silent for a moment and then asked me how to solve it.

My suggestion: Turn management into motivation.

Originally, the company's incentive mechanism was a passive "hierarchical incentive mechanism" popular years ago, which could no longer meet the needs of current sales staff. The incentive mechanism that should be implemented now is to fully stimulate the individual sales potential of salespeople, ignite their sales passion, and make each salesperson an autonomous marketing entity. How to build an autonomous marketing entity?

Step 1: Change supervision to guidance Replace the original supervision system with full trust in salespeople. Meanwhile, sales supervisors and directors at the office should step out of their closed offices, go to the front line, visit terminals with salespeople, understand terminal conditions, help salespeople solve practical problems, and guide them on how to serve terminals.

Step 2: Fully delegate authority to the front line Within the broad policy framework, fully trust and authorize frontline salespeople. Let them make decisions on display, promotion, publicity, and changes or adjustments to storefronts based on the actual situation of each store, without a one-size-fits-all approach. They should report daily, summarize weekly, and disclose sales data and cost-effectiveness ratios.

Step 3: Encourage independent entrepreneurship No one knows the regional situation better than frontline employees. Therefore, the company can consider encouraging some frontline employees who are loyal, have ideas, passion, and a desire to start their own businesses to become the company's distributors. The company can provide support in terms of capital, logistics, and expenses.

The process of employees successfully starting their own businesses is the process of the company's sales growth. Throughout the process, the company's trust and care are fully demonstrated, stimulating employees' sales enthusiasm (who wouldn't strive for their own business?), while not infringing on employees' personal privacy and security. This is true sales management.

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