304 CHAPTER16 MANAGING THESALESFORCE
rep quits, the costs of finding and training a new rep, plus the cost of lost sales, can run
into the high five figures—and a sales force with many new hires is less productive.^10
In selecting sales reps, the company can start by asking customers what traits
they prefer in salespeople. Most customers want honest, reliable, knowledgeable, and
helpful reps. Another approach is to look for traits that are common to successful
salespeople. Charles Garfield concluded that supersales performers exhibit risk tak-
ing, a powerful sense of mission, a problem-solving bent, care for the customer, and
careful planning.^11 Mayer and Greenberg noted that the effective salesperson has
empathy,the ability to feel as the customer does, and ego drive,a strong personal need
to make the sale.^12
After management develops suitable selection criteria, the next step is to recruit
applicants by various means, including soliciting names from current sales reps, using
employment agencies, placing print and on-line job ads, and contacting graduating
college students. Selection procedures can vary from an informal interview to pro-
longed testing and interviewing. Although test scores are only one information ele-
ment in a set that includes personal characteristics, references, past employment his-
tory, and interviewer reactions, they are weighted quite heavily by such companies as
IBM, Prudential, Procter & Gamble, and Gillette. Gillette claims that tests have
reduced turnover by 42 percent and have correlated well with the subsequent progress
of new reps in the sales organization.Training Sales Representatives
Today’s customers expect salespeople to have deep product knowledge, offer ideas to
improve customer operations, and be efficient and reliable. These demands have
required companies to make a much higher investment in training their sales reps.
Companies use training to help sales reps: (1) Know and identify with the com-
pany; (2) learn about the company’s products; (3) know customers’ and competitors’
characteristics; (4) make effective sales presentations; and (5) understand sales proce-
dures and responsibilities. Training time varies with the complexity of the selling task
and the type of person recruited into the sales organization. The median training
period is 28 weeks in industrial-products companies, 12 in service companies, and 4 in
consumer-products companies. At IBM, new reps receive extensive initial training and
may spend 15 percent of their time each year in additional training.
Training often involves a variety of methods, including role playing, audio- and
videotapes, CD-ROMs, and Web-based distance learning. For instance, reps at the
Tandem division of Compaq used to complain that they could not keep up with the
printed information and training materials the company sent them. Now field reps
carry their own miniature training rooms with them—they simply slip a CD-ROM disk
into their laptop computers.^13Figure 5-16 Managing the Sales Force