Is this a fair arrangement for the salespeople on this team? (long)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I work as a trainer in the Inside Sales division of a company you would recognize if I named it, which is why I’m not naming it. One of the team managers–let’s call him Elrond–is on leave; I have been tasked to manage half of his team until Elrond returns (and he may not). Another sales manager, Galadriel, has the other half. I have an issue I’d like the board’s input on.

First I’ll explain the business. Let’s say that we provide, oh, sword, armor, & spear maintenance to various enterprises in Middle-earth. Our salespeople work mostly over the phone, but they are NOT telemarketers. They only call businesses, not individuals, and primarily call companies we have an ongoing relationship with; and they are not merely permitted, not merely encouraged, but actually REQUIRED to provide their full names, work phone numbers, and work email addresses to their clients. Also, they spend about 1 week out of every 12 on site visits, in which they go to their territories and work at either closing sales they could not close over the phone or solidifying relationships with customers who use us regularly. The customers are free to call the salespeople themselves if they need help resolving an issue such as, oh, automating their use of our service, or linking their point-of-purchase system with ours, our so forth. Salespeople are assessed according to 4 metrics: number of calls to unique customers per day (they’re supposed to average at least 25*); amount of time spent on said calls (minimum of 2.5 hours*); new business brought in; and overall growth of their sales territories. They get

On the 10-person time I’m temporarily the boss of, there are two salesmen named **Gimli **and Legolas. Gimli has worked with the company for a long time, but in sales only about two years. Before then he was on the production side, where he was a star. People from his old position still call him with technical questions. Health considerations obliged him to leave production, and he’s working in sales until he hits the magic retirement number. He is very talented when it comes to analyzing data, solving technical problems, and so forth, but is horrible at writing proposals and uncomfortable at dealing with people.

Legolas is much younger. He’s a natural salesman–personable, empathetic, funny; he’s good at getting people to trust him and to answer the questions necessary to figure out the best way to solve their problems; he’s also skilled at both creating and presenting proposals. But he sucks at analysis and technical stuff in general.

Each salesperson is assigned a teammate, the idea being that if one staff member is out sick or on vacation, a specific person is always assigned to cover his or her customers. Legolas & Gimli take this further than most. Legolas does all the sales calls for both of their territories; Gimli does all the technical stuff. When they go into the field they go together–not due to any artifice on their part; their territories neighbor one another, so it’s simply easier on the budget. They work on their presentations together; Gimli does the analysis and number-crunching; Legolas makes it sound interesting and eloquent, and always does the presentation. When it comes time for bonuses, they’re always in the top 5 of the entire department (not just their team), and frequently number 1 and number 2; whichever of them gets the higher gives half the difference to the person to the other. This is their private agreement, not one arranged by Elrond, but he knows about it.

Now, while I have no problem with this arrangement, Galadriel does. The environment here is very competitive, and she avers that what L & G are doing gives them an unfair advantage over the competition. (I should add that she does not get credit for what her extra 10 employees do while she is in charge of approving their vacations and so forth.) She thinks Legolas & Gimli should be forced apart because neither of them will develop the full range of sales skills while each can rely on the other to prop him up; when Gimli retires in a few years, she says, Legolas will a much lesser salesman, and if Legolas decides to go into pharmaceutical sales or some such, Gimili will be diminished. I feel that they have found a way to intelligently use their resources in a way that benefits not merely the two of them but the company as a whole; both their territories are on the upswing, which differentiated them from the majority of their co-workers.

Who’s right?

*Not the real number for reasons left as an exercise for the class.

2

I’m with you.

I actually did the same thing in a sales position I had once, only we didn’t let our idiot manager know we were doing it. We were required to be “out the door from 9 to 4”, which was utterly retarded. We needed time in the office to prepare proposals, make follow up calls, set appointments, etc. And if it was a day without any appointment calls, or maybe only 1 or 2, you could not conceivably spend 6 hours+ making cold calls.

So since our territories were adjacent, we’d meet every morning at the library for a brainstorming session and to plan our “routes”. We’d ride together, but only the rep for that particular territory did the cold calling, and we’d get both our territories covered by the end of the morning. We’d then go to one of our houses to make follow up calls to set appointments, write thank you notes, etc.

We were consistently the top 2 reps in the district, always either meeting or exceeding quotas, and even came up with a program that was so successful that it was implemented and required to be followed nation-wide the following year (and all subsequent years).

If both of their individual jobs are getting done and they’re each meeting their individual quotas, I see no reason why they can’t or shouldn’t team up.

3

Please tell me that his last name is Hubbard.

4

I’m guessing you’ve never read Lord of the Rings and are unfamilar with Elrond, Galadriel, Legolas, & Gimli.

5

I’ve done something similar in that position myself. I used to work for another multinational I won’t name, doing the same sort of thing as Gimili & Legolas. I was particularly skilled at setting up point-of-purchase automations*, so whenever one of my teammates needed help with that, I’d take over that part fo the operation (leaving them to cover my stuff in the meantime) and get half the credit for the sale. (Unless it was someone I was fond of who really needed a sale, in which case I’d do it off the clock and let them take full credit.)

Their de jure manager knows about it. While Galadriel has a point when she claims that Legolas may not be growing the way he needs to, I suspect her issue is more that, if she breaks up their mini-team, she’ll be able to vault her own actual team to the tops of the sales figures. I think this partly because I offered to take responsibility of both Legolas & Gimli till their boss returns or is replaced, and she doesn’t want that.
*Actually it was something else entirely

6

It seems to me that Gimli and Legolas have figured out a system that benefits both the company and themselves. Galadrial sounds like a small-minded middle manager who wants to find reasons to make her employees miserable. Her fears about what happens if/when the relationship breaks up are just that - fears. If and when it happens, the company can deal with it.

Unless there’s a real problem, let Gimli and Legolas work the way they want. If other people feel that Gimli and Legolas have an unfair advantage, tell 'em to pair up themselves and see if they can do better.

Companies should encourage this kind of free thinking, IMO. Everyone’s happier all around, and the overall situation is usually good for the bottom line.

7

First rule of management–if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The deal Legolas and Gimli satisfies them both, and produces good results for the Kingdom. Tell Galadriel to go get sodomized by a balrog.

8

I’m rather under the impression that were Legolas & Gimli working under the auspices of Galadriel, that she would fight tooth and nail to keep them partnered.

Far easier to tear someone else’s team down than to build your own up.

ETA: I have mentioned my nutjob magnet theory to you, haven’t I?

9

I can see both sides. On one hand, they are supporting each other and it sounds like they are bringing in a lot of business. On the other hand, the other sales people are essentially competing against a team and it doesn’t sound like that is the intent of the setup. That is a bit unfair to the sales people that are working on their own.

10

I don’t think I made it entirely clear that I’m the boss of only one of them right now, and she’s the boss of the other. She can screw with them just by making Legolas move to a cubicle in her area so she can “manage” him better, and by mandating that he call only customers in his literal territory except in emergencies. I could tell Gimli he can still call customers out of both, but he wouldn’t be able to afford the time; and when I offered to take on Legolas so I’d have 11 out of Elrond’s 20 employees, or to trade her any one of of those people for Legolas, she said that wouldn’t be efficient; and she claims that I am not objective in this case because, as I’m the training guy, it makes no difference to my compensation how the teams do.

11

You have, without a doubt, the coolest job EVAR.

12

Back in college, one of my professors claimed I must give off some pheremone only insane women could smell and were attracted to; this after two different women burst into our office looking for me, burst into tears, and wept on my shoulder, in one day.

13

Legolas & Gimli do not sound like idiots and I’m sure they both realize that the other could leave the job due to retirement or greener pastures. Thus, they are probably learning (whether intentionally or due to simple exposure) from one another ways to improve their personal weaknesses. I’m with you and you could point out to Galadriel that an employee might be disheartened consider looking for a new job if management were to sadistically tear them apart like that.

14

I think Galadriel is correct in that it would behoove the two salespeople to learn the others’ skill sets. That knowledge may indeed help them out later in their career.
But the arrangement itself is a smart one and you’d be a fool of a Took to even think about consider breaking them apart.

Tell Galadriel to take her suggestion and shove it up that dark place where all the other lights go out.

15

I just checked, and salespeople’s compensation is based on absolute criteria, not relative. Being the number 1 salesperson for a given quarter gets you (a) bragging rights and (b) the right to brag. To me that obviates Galadriel’s complaint.

16

That would temper it a bit, but even outside of direct compensation for being #1 there would be other benefits. The giving of promotions, how you look at review time and the like often take such things into consideration. (perhaps that’s not an issue in your office, I’m just talking about sales groups in general)

17

Except that reviews are always “what have you done for me lately?” not “what have you done in your career?” Gimli obviously doesn’t care about promotions; he works hard because he needs a job until retirement. Legolas, in my mind, is making use of an available resource.

When I had a job like theirs, I used to do prepare all my sales presentations at home; I used the work day solely for making calls and solving customer service issues. As a result I was able to do 30% more sales calls than the norm, which made me look like the bee’s knees. I was able to do this, of course, because I was unmarried and lived alone. Was I being unfair?

18

On a more cereal note, Galadriel reminds me of someone I used to work for, way back in the olden days. Let’s call her Shelob. It was on an assembly line. The particular task I was working on at the time was gluing these little metal things inside of these little ceramic things. It was fairly disgusting and highly, intensely, mind-bogglingly boring. At the end of the day, the number of units we assembled was counted up, and we were rated on our efficiency.

A guy that I’d befriended and I decided to sit together while we worked on this task. We were laughing, joking, and talking all day. We ended up pacing each other and we ended up with the same efficiency rating, which was amazingly higher than normal.

Shelob thought that that was “suspicious”, and forbade us to sit near each other ever again.

My point being, if breaking up a team results in worse end results, dumbassery abounds.

19

That’s why I noted it might not be an issue in this case but was a more general observation.

I’ve never seen a manager that didn’t look favorably on taking work home. But you were still doing the work yourself.

20

6 years in Inside Sales here (currently sales ops). We have a similar inside sales model at our company, with some minor differences.

While I can see Galadriel’s point - that this partnership may not be an optimal way to develop each sales rep to fully develop their professional skills - I believe she’s failing to see a critical element of this situation. That being, if both Legolas and Gimli are smart guys (and it sounds like they are) they are learning from each other all the while. Although given your sales model, I do believe that any concerns around a less competitive workplace are debatable at best.

And while she may have a point in theory, I do believe she has no place to comment, since she is not their manager and currently has no dog in this race. However, were I their manager, I would maybe suggest to them that they switch out responsibilities on a regular basis. Maybe for one week toward the beginning of each quarter (which is a less critical time if you are on a quarterly cycle) they swap roles, and if they feel it’s helping each of them and most importantly everyone feels the business isn’t suffering, they gradually increase the duration for which they alternate.

As a temporary manager, though, I don’t blame you if you feel no need to address this situation - you’re just there to keep the train on the rails until Elrond gets back.

In my opinion, what it comes down to is this: The key responsibilities of a sales manager (especially a temporary replacement) include 1) to keep revenue flowing and consistently increase pipeline, and 2) to ensure the ongoing professional development of your reps. In that order.