The Hindu Business Line : Invert the selling pyramid

INDIA is a nation of shop-keepers. And catering to this nation of shop-keepers is a whole large tribe of salespersons. Look keenly at the sizing of commercial society we live within. The bottom of the pyramid is occupied by the largest numbers of commercial people in the quest for a commercial life - the salespersons! Nearly three-fourths of the pyramid of commerce is occupied by the salesperson. Just above the large chunk of salespersons sits the marketing guy. The guy who is all about branding the product, service and dream alike. And right above them sit the pony-tailed advertising types. The guys who actually make all those creatives that help sell your brand of multani mitti, mulligatawny soup and mutton biriyani alike.

This army of salespersons is the biggest talent pool the country boasts of in sheer number terms. We as a nation possibly have more salespersons with us than the entire population of a UK, for sure. This piece peeks into the efficiency of the talent pool we have at hand. I peek into the domain of what's wrong with our sales force. I have a complaint. This big complaint is all about the fact that our sales force is not as sharp as it needs to be. And that is an accusation as well!

We are big in numbers, but numbers alone will not do. Our sales-force is a pretty numbed one. Numbed by a degree of efficiency that is getting blunted day by day. And why this blunting? There are many reasons to explore.

In this instalment we will explore just one. The big one. Our sales force is just too hierarchical in its layering. There are just too many people in the sales force who don't sell! Take a keen look at the typical company. Check out its selling hierarchy. Right at the bottom of the pyramid is the salesperson. This is the person who is in the market day in and day out. He sells your brand of salt just as he peddles your brand of mutual fund. He is the guy who is in touch with the customers direct. The guy selling salt is in the B2B part of the chain, selling his branded salt to the retailer community at large. The guy with the mutual fund is more direct here. He is in the B2C space, meeting up with the customer direct. Both these guys are really the front-end soldiers of the selling community. The guys who know the most about the market. The guys who sharpen their skills with every sale.

Look just above these guys in the typical selling organisation. Here you meet the supervisory level. The controller of sales. The guy who is at times typically called a sales development officer. He is not a manager and neither is he a salesperson. He slips somewhere between these two stools. He performs a valuable task, though, knitting together the front-end salesperson with the sales manager who sits above him.

The supervisory level is, however, an aggregator of business. The typical supervisor will look after ten salespersons. Their collective achievement is his. Their collective failure is his as well.

Look just above the supervisor now. Here you will find the Assistant Manager (Sales). At times even a Deputy Manager sitting above him. And surely an Area Sales Manager sitting above them all. Look higher still. You will find the Branch Sales Manager, an aggregator who aggregates four to six ASMs. And just above him is the General Manager (Sales). And right above him a Vice-President (Sales)!

My complaint is against the large army of aggregators the selling profession has spawned over all these years. With every passing year, with every passing financial year's rewards, more and more front-end salespersons end up in jobs that sell less and monitor more. The problems are aplenty. If the salesperson at the front has a 100 per cent component of selling and no percentage of planning and monitoring at all, the supervisor above him has 70 per cent selling supervision and 30 per cent of planning, monitoring and everything that is non-selling in real terms. The Assistant Manager is higher up in this hierarchy of non-selling. He will therefore sell 50 per cent and plan 50 per cent. The ASM then does even less selling. Thirty per cent selling and 70 per cent non-selling! The Branch Manager, the General Manager and the Vice-President (Sales) will do less and less of selling. This is a blunted system.

What's more, people who sell less get paid more. The key management issue is this. The front-end salesperson who knows the market the best has little or no role in the planning process at all. He is essentially just an implementer. The most knowledgeable sales-entity in organisation is not a decision-maker at all! Decision-making is a cascade that is the preserve of those who know less and less of sales and more and more of the planning formats that the sales profession is besotted with today. The Vice-President (Sales) is the least in connect with the market. And he is also the prime decision maker who will decide how things will be done. And this is a tragedy.

Let's invert the pyramid. Let's create a revolution that is different. The solution to sorting out the key issue of a blunted sales force that sells less and plans more is best addressed by upsetting this pyramid we have so carefully built over all these years. Time to get the Vice-President (Sales) to have a 50 per cent component of selling in his job profile! Front-end selling! Imagine the impact this can make in an organisation that today does not respect the VP as much. Time to get everyone else in the organisation to dump their planning matrices for the moment. Time to get everyone else to have an 80 per cent component of direct selling day in and day out. Time to re-define job profiles. Time to get every person in the sales organisation interested in the key dimension of job at hand. Selling!

Time to flatten the selling organisation as well. Why do we need all these layers? The head is important. The foot soldiers are important. The middle level, as in the case of the human body that has developed a paunch, is just mere flab. Time to cut the flab. Time to go in for a drastic liposuction!

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

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