Mor(e)on policies
Evergreen
39 Posts
What's your thoughts on sales incentives from vendors policies. Vendors are offering trips, HDTVs, cars and other "stuff" to our sales people that sell a set amount.
My concern is that I don't want incentives unduley influencing sales without regard to the value of the product (ie.: selling brand A vs brand B becuase brand A vendor is offering a trip, even though brand A is inferior and costs more).
My concern is that I don't want incentives unduley influencing sales without regard to the value of the product (ie.: selling brand A vs brand B becuase brand A vendor is offering a trip, even though brand A is inferior and costs more).
Comments
But I think you've raised an interesting question which deserves a considered response. This is a possible conflict of interest issue. If you haven't seen them, there have been a variety of company ethics-related posts on the Forum, and you could do a search for those. I believe there might even be sample ethics policies in the HR Documents 911 area.
I'm in the public sector, where we're not allowed to accept much more than a coffee mug or a gimme cap. But from what I know about sales, incentives in the form of trips, electronics, etc. are extremely common. Maybe someone else has other ideas and will post them, but I don't see how you can opt out or disallow your sales force from accepting these incentives without demoralizing them. Nevertheless, you can still have the standard and the expectation that your sales personnel will not let incentives influence them to push an inappropriate product on a customer, and you can communicate that you will hold sales staff accountable for that standard.
To address the question in a more philosophical way, isn't the "raison d'etre" of sales to sell things as a primary goal with "whether-they-need-it-or-not" a distant second? And here's another devil's x}> advocate question: Is this is an HR issues or a sales management issue?
The purpose of the code, among other things, is to thwart favoritism to certain vendors through excessive incentives.
You must be in a very different business to have this practice be normal. There must be quite a bit more to the story - but otherwise, I don't like the process - it just doesn't feel right.
We've never qualified before, but we may soon. Personally, I don't like it. But it is demoralizing if the owner (who is me) gets the trips or they are not accecpted from the vendor. I understand how it can be a great sales tool, but all tools can be destructive as well as constructive (try a sledge hammer).
It was brought up when I interviewed a potential candidate that left a former firm in part because the owner took all the sales incentives for his own.
I was just looking for other firms to weigh in on this issue, after all, I'm a small business, just trying to make payrolls.
Thanks.
I appreciate the input on this subject. I think that I will let those that work hard to win the prices, win them. That is, until it's abused - ha!
Merry Christmas to all! opps, hope I didn't offend anyone!