When I took this position, I took it for the manager and the experience and tenure of upper management. That quickly changed and the company decided to eliminate all of the experienced managers and bring in people who know nothing about the industry. That didn’t work so let’s do it again with some more people. It’s like testing spaghetti against the wall to see if it will stick and instead of trying a different strand, they get a different brand, cook it and try it again. During my two years of tenure I had five different managers and more changed to upper management than I can even count.
Mid-year it is decided to change the account packages and give more accounts to inside sales and give the Field Account Reps, FAR’s some accounts from inside sales. This meant losing half of my package, over 100 accounts, and gaining five from inside sales of which only two are viable accounts. Told the goal moved with the account but no one can show you the math behind this. Given completely unobtainable goals and no support or resources to reach these goals.
Management is more concerned about the number of clicks you make in a certain area of Sales Force and pre-cal plans following an ABC format than actually looking at the account and figuring out how you can grow it and be meaningful. Do not add a D to the format or you will be in trouble. One of the items in the ABC format is to review current promotions. Duh! Of course I will do this and educate my customer if relevant sales! Management is required to ride with each sales rep every quarter, not to help the rep close business or overcome obstacles, but to sit back and “evaluate” the rep. Yes, this is exactly what I was told verbatim.
Sales reps are required to push promotions, see above with the structured pre-cal plans, but there is no inventory of the product. This creates frustration for the customer because they want to take advantage of the sale but you can’t deliver the product. Serious problems all throughout operations but management has their heads in the sand and according to them, there is no problem. No one is held accountable except the sales rep who is standing in front of the customer having to apologize and is stuck with the goal.