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Ideas for Action

Makee sales taskclearM I. Shapiro is professor ofadministration and head ofrequired M BA marketing course

Doyle is president of SXD Asso-a management consulting firmNeck, New York. The study on

estern Electric Fund.

In an earlier HBR article w et sales task clarity has a

sales task clarity cans of good re crui tingon hecause it can mak eth high ego drive workbetter. Furth erm ore, it canforce a performance-oriented com-on system. On the other hand,com pensatio n sys-m working well.Some sales tasks by theirre are less distin ct th an oth ers. Adetailer who calls on a doctor togest tha t she prescribe a particu larr examp le, receives de-yed feedhack. Wit hou t a later au ditprescriptions w ritte n by the doctorr that p roduct and com peting ones, ithard to discover whe ther the salema de. Another examp le ofm selling

takes m on ths or years andIn this sequel to th e 1980le we turn our attentio n to three

Benson P. Shapiro andStepben X. Doyleimprov e sales force m otivation andperformance.

Defiaition &measurementA task is clear if the relation -ship hetween a salesperson's effortand the reported results of that effort isnot ambigu ous. Clarity is a function ofth e imp act of a person's efforts on salesresults, of the timeliness of perfor-mance feedback, and of the accuracyof the feedback.We designed a questionnaireto measu re these three aspects andadmin istered it to salespeople and theirsupervisors in four companies. Two ofthe sales forces sold business products,the other tw o sold transpo rtation ser-vices. All the companies were profit-able and were industry leaders w ithnational reputations and respectedproducts. The hu siness products sales-people received clear and accur ate feed-back weekly about their performance,wh ich was relatively easy to measure(by dollar volum e of orders booked).The transp ort services companies hadno definite, objective m easures becauseof the difficulty of correctly c reditingthe revenue from millions of (usuallysmall) shipm ents to the various sales-perso ns. It was hard to discoverwh ether a sale was made through t heshipper or the receiver of the merchan-dise. Moreover, the tim e hetween asales call and a purch ase of the serv iceby telephone-not directly through thesalesperson - varied considerably.

Motivation &performanceM otivation is difficult todefine and hard to measu re. Conse-quently, in trying to dete rmi newhether differences in sales task clity are associated with differences isales force motivation, we used muple measu res. They w ere sales perfoma nce against goal, supervisor'sperformance evaluation, amount oftim e worked per week, and strengthsalesperson's belief that effort woulrewarded. Salespeople in the tw o buness products organizations scored30% to 60% higher on the mo tivatmeasures than did their c ounterparin the transportation companies. Afour com panies looked for recrui tsw ith a strong need to achieve and hego drives, so the differences in m otion evidently came from differencsales task clarity, not recr uiting andselection practices.(As our previous arti cleexplained at length, th e type of payplan- incen tive versus s tra ight sa lalso had less impact than the claritthe task. Task clarity was 50% m orimportant in determining motivatthan personality, and nearly thr eetim es as im por tant as type of pay pWe therefore are confident in sayinthat clarity of task is the m ostimportant element in salespersonmotivation.)When the elem ents of thjoh were indistin ct, the salespeoplenot know where they stood and conot get reinforcemen t from new s otheir performance. A sales representive of one of the tran spo rtatio n sevices companies said, "Selling in thindustry is like living in a dream. Gting ahead is a m atte r of luck and ptics. It's discouraging."In the husiness productscompan ies, the sales reps remainedaverage of 3.3 years, versus 1.1 in thtransport services organizations. Atrict sales manager of one of the lacom men ted, "Turnover is a real prolem.We hire aggressive young traiand fire them up with training. Wh

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Harvard Business Review November-December 1983ng and how com petitive they are.f the reps who qu it are uncom -able w ith ou r type of selling."

Ways to enhan ce i tJudging from our research ,four areas wh ere m anage-nt can mak e tasks clear.

1 Deployment. Often salespeo-are assigned territories w ith onlyc boun daries an d are givent le more than " hunting l icenses"We suggest

her of accoun tswh ich each perso n has respo nsibil-ecification of goals for each ofrget acco unts.Few sales representativesregularly handle m ore than ahoutaccounts in a situation in which afort, in stea d of a cursorypanies assign several hun-acco unts to each salesperson or

hem "a ll" the accou nts in a geo-Doing so can only lead toas th e salespeople realizes to control their performan ce.The more specific thent coverage, the hetter. It is impor-for exam ple, to list the acco untsrep. If necessary, a part of theined task can be the salesperson'sto the list som e

The im portan t thing is that theespeople understand w hich accountsr and w ill he

2 Account management. Thee mu st he charged with clears to accomp lish at each a cc ou nt -sales goals, activity goals, saless hy product, and so on. As we haven, the more m easurable the goals,r the m otiv ation . Goals can, ofgo heyond sales to includ e m at-

include in a person's goals tasks overwh ich he or she has little or no co ntrol.Frustration and an xiety are the res ult.If, for exam ple, salespeop le are judgedby shipm ents to acco unts (not byorders or bookings) and th e shippingschedule varies with the productioncontro l organization's ah ility or incli-nation , the salespeople will he dis-gruntled becau se the task is unclear.3 Information sy stem. Theinformation system furnishes the con-nection between actual performanceand reported performance. A poorinformation system will destroy thesalesperson's perception of anunhloc ked linkage hetween effort andresults. The information system,more than any other tool, determinesthe tim elines s and accuracy of feed-hack, which are vital to task clarity. Anelem ent of rando mn ess added by thesystem to the q uality of the perfor-man ce reports ruins the accuracy ofthe feedback. Delay in the informationflow reduces th e salespeople's ab ilityto remem ber their effort (at hoth anintellec tual and an emo tional level)

and to relate it to the reported resu lts.4 Field sales m anagement. Toensure task clarity for each salesper-son, the field sales manager can u se avariety of manag emen t m echanism sand processes. M ost of these center onthe goal-setting, feedhack, coaching,and appraisal cycle. They include m an-agem ent hy objectives, performanceappraisal, and mo nth ly reviews.Of course, they require a

com mitm ent by the field sales manag-ers, which hegins with deployment andaccount planning. The m anager tailorsthe task to the particular salesperson,sales territory, and acco unts. Perhapseven more impo rtant from a motiva-tional poin t of view, the m anagerensures throug h a dialogue wi th th esalesperson that he or she understandsand accepts th e task as laid out. In thecase of goods like the aforementionedgenerating e quipm ent, the challenge ofclarifying the sales task will test th ecleverness and ing enuity of any sales

manag er helps to clarify and amplthe definition of the task and th e surem ent of results.Naturally, an organizatsales managers m ust und erstandtask and be trained to accomp lishBut no sales manage r, regard less oity or training, can work effectivewith a poor information system ocompensation system that rewardpeople haphazardly instead of forclearly defined r esu lts.Sales task c larity is gencontrollable by manage men t. Moover, it may be one of the m ost poful motivational tools available topolicy-level sales and marketingexecutives. ^

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