The Hindu Business Line : Money and the salesperson

THIS is just about the month of May. Most salespersons who work for companies have just been rewarded! Every company that follows a March 31 year-ending has done the honours. Some of you find yourselves with increments and bonuses that are attractive, and some of you are just about there, hanging on to a fringe package that seems wafer-thin, to say the least.

As you read this piece, I hear your wife's voice in the background telling you how your company knows to wring good work, long hours and absolute dedication out of you but knows little about rewards and motivation brownie points. As you read this piece, I hear your husband popping the bubbly, congratulating you on the pay check your BPO outfit has just doled out. You have a big increment on your hand, dear lady! Well done!

Yet again, these very sharp ears of mine hear nothing at all in many a salespersons home. Just nothing significant has happened. Life just about goes on. And so does motivation! Rewarding salespersons is a tricky issue that confronts many a manager who looks after teams of people who work for her. March is a tough month for such a manager. The appraisals need to be done, the numbers need to be crunched and the final recommendations of increments and bonuses, along with transfers and promotions need to go out.

In this piece, let's just focus on the issue of rewards. Approach One: Good old Murali, who works for a traditional FMCG company as a salesman says there is little to complain. Every year, literally everyone in his team gets the same increment. There is an 8 per cent adjustment of salary for all. Yes, bonuses are given out, but that is completely linked to volume. The more you have sold in the previous year, the more income you make as a bonus. And this bonus may be doled out at the end of the year, or just about comes to him every month with his pay check. In many ways, Murali writes his own pay check month after month. More the sales, more the money!

Murali writes his own pay check, but the difference is that the pay check is largely the same every month. In formats that spur Murali every month there is very little difference in the motivation income value of such a plan for incentives. The poor chap's salary varies only by a few hundred rupees every alternative month. The market geography he works within is such that volumes are rather stable, and the product category he touts is such that variation is not such a big buzz at all!

Approach Two: Cheryl of the bubbly-popping household has just walked away with a handsome bonus. She works in the nascent BPO market for a low-end financial services product selling company. Cheryl has done stints on inbound customer service and has spent the last year on outbound sales. For Cheryl, every day is a heady experience. Life starts at 2 p.m. in sync with the UK markets she services. And from then on, her 8-hour shift is a roller-coaster ride of hardsell. Cheryl does not know how the day goes by. The work day is frenetic. She has a whole set of calls to make, prospecting sales. She has people slamming the phone on her face, people yelling at her and people actually listening to her as well. Every day she emerges with three real live sales transactions of differing value. Every day is a different experience.

Cheryl's BPO outfit believes in rewarding its employees on a daily basis literally. Every sale you make has a volume and value attached to it, and there are incentives that go with it. You make a base package, and over it rides the commission on outbound sales. The incentives inked to value-sales are pretty interesting, really!

For Cheryl, every day is like riding the stock market. Talking incessantly into the phone, racing against time of shut-down, Cheryl is steered ahead in her work by her team-lead and supervisor, who is literally at the head table on a podium, jotting down sales achievements of every operator under his control. Every time there is a sale, there is a whoop and a yell! And every whoop and a yell has a value and an incentive attached. On days Cheryl will walk away with just a hundred rupees, but there will be days when it will be jackpot day!

Murali and Cheryl are at two opposing ends of the spectrum of remuneration patterns that dot the sales-scape of India. And the twain shall never meet, it seems! In between these two extremes rest the rest of sales folk of every kind. While most other things change within rigid corporate organisations, the system of remunerating sales folk largely remains static.

In many ways there is little imagination at play. Time to wake up the bean-counters and get a realistic debate going on an exciting pattern of remuneration. There are models from all over the world that are exciting to look at. And guess what! It's not always money that talks. It's much more at times! It's that offer to use the holiday homes in some forty-odd locations all over India! It's that one dream vacation that one has been waiting for! It's that chance of a lifetime to meet up with the guru of strategy (whoever that is)! It's that one chance of a lifetime to learn skiing in the Alps! It's that one-month opportunity to work in the CEO's office as his executive assistant to understand all the stuff that goes on in that office of mystique! It might as well be that Yoga camp! It could as well be that forced holiday with the family he has neglected all these years! But wonder what they will do with him anymore? That's his problem!

Whatever it is, time for the Indian corporate sales organisation to buck up, buckle up and prepare for a whole new era of new incentive schemes. New incentives that will get your jaded sales folk back with vim, verve and vigour! Stuff they started out with when they joined your organisation but lost somewhere on the way.

(The author is a business strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.)

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