Maximizing Employee Performance with Behavior Based Incentive Plans - Assignment Example

Sales Management Mike Dalton believes the remuneration package used with the sales representatives is ‘right’ for his company. Discuss the problems of applying such a remuneration package to IFP’s operation and using justified arguments. Discuss whether you agree with Mike Dalton’s conviction that it ‘keeps the sales team on their toes’. The remuneration package employed by IFP is not right so to speak. This is because the sales representatives do not have any job security in essence. If the employees find that their work stands no chance if they do not get the sales leads, it would become useless for them to work for IFP in the first place. However this is not the case because they are being constantly let down by the sales managers and indeed the policy adopted by Mike Dalton. As Dalton believes in offering the sales representatives with the remuneration package alone and no salary, this stands as a very negative connotation of the entire payment structure. If for instance a sales representative is unable to find a single sales lead in a particular period of time, he would not receive any payments at all. It would mean that all his hard work and devotion for the sake of IFP would essentially go to waste. What is important is to understand how IFP can give its best to its own employees who are indeed receiving nothing at all, more so when they are being committed to the company and its stance in essence. There is a dire need to understand how IFP’s viewpoint would be taken over by the employees. I do not agree that the employees would be on their toes if they receive just the compensation for the sales leads that they bring in instead of the salaries that they should be getting (Weitzul 1993). This is a direct case of meting out differential treatment for the employees because they are being hard done by. Justice needs to be done so that they remain motivated and glued to their respective jobs. The remuneration package used by Mike Dalton might not serve the purpose of the sales representatives and indeed the employees at large because it does not warrant a just policy to meet their most basic needs at work. This should be done away with at the earliest so that the employees might heave a sigh of relief and work to their best effect in the future (Gunsch 1991). The sales team will always be at the mercy of their sales leads and they thus know that if they fall short on this count, they would be removed from their jobs and hence their termination would mean a lot of economic problems for not only their own selves but also their families. These are important pointers which should be understood by Mike Dalton and his decision making team members. The justifications of using such a remuneration package are absolutely minimal and these could be easily understood whilst keeping in mind that the employees need to be encouraged for their work which they do within their job realms. IFP has to play its significant role here because Mike Dalton is surely going the wrong way at detailing his sales representatives (Chonko 1996). If these sales representatives are not given a proper remuneration package, they will surely end up going the wrong way and thus a lot of negatives would arise within their ranks in essence. They would start bringing in slowness within the completion of different work tasks and thus slow down the entire process of work at IFP. Mike Dalton should be wary of this fact because he has to be answerable to IFP as per the actions and behaviors of the sales representatives in the long run. In all fairness, this remuneration package would lead IFP to nowhere. Now is the time to move ahead and bring in the much needed changes which would set the ball rolling for the sake of the company from a long term standpoint (Long 2001). What is most important here is to make Mike Dalton realize about the rightness that he believes to have existed or continues to exist within the remuneration package. He must be told where he is wrong within his perspective and how this could be corrected within the shortest possible time. 2. IFP wants to encourage sales representatives to do more cold calling. Is the company going the right way about achieving this… and indeed is cold calling the right thing to be concentrating on? What else could be done to find and retain valuable customers? It is a fact that IFP wants to encourage their sales representatives to do a lot of cold calling. One shall believe that the sales representatives are being encouraged to do something which becomes a bane on the part of the customers. Often times it has been seen that the customers do not appreciate the idea of being caught in the blue. They would much rather be contacted at a time when they are free and have nothing better to do. Perhaps it is the flawed psychology of Mike Dalton which is coming into the fray (Greene 1993). He is inculcating a wrong approach which he believes must be followed precisely by the sales representatives working under his folds. There is a good amount of resentment and dissatisfaction that the sales representatives receive on the hands of the customers because they are not ready to commit into something when they are doing their chores or least expecting them. This psyche has come in from marketing research and has been the basis of study worldwide. Cold calling has not been able to generate sales and induce trial of the product or service that is marketed across different sales channels and through varied sales representatives around the world, and IFP is no exception to this rule. A better idea would be to have an understanding that the customers should be given the room and space that they so rightly deserve. They must be told exactly that the sales representatives are there to make a sale to them which is genuine and which shall not hinder in their way of performing important tasks. This empathy must come from the ranks of the sales representatives themselves (Mulvey 1997). I believe the company is not going the right way as far as cold calling regimes are concerned. It must get its act together and change its course of action because it will not bring in the desired results. Instead there would be repulsion for the fire products and related equipment that come under the aegis of IFP in the coming days within the customers’ minds and hearts. They would feel that the sales representatives are reaching out to them at all wrong times and hence it is their duty to keep away from the same. This would mean that IFP has to set things right if it wants to achieve sales targets which are brought together by the sales representatives themselves. A lot of this has to be decided by Mike Dalton himself because he is the one who is in charge of the sales representatives and the sales managers spread across different levels and given positions of responsibility to set things right within the domains of IFP (Arnold 1993). In order to find and retail valuable customers, IFP must reach out to the relevant target markets and do more advertising and direct marketing, which would not comprise of cold calling alone. The concept of cold calling should not be abandoned in entirety rather this can be curtailed to bring in the desired results and to meet the realistic expectations, on the part of both Mike Dalton as well as the company. The company must decide today why it is not investing within the advertising quarters because it has a much better approach than the sales representatives would find in the wake of the cold calling realms. There is a definitive plus and hence has been quoted within the respective regimes for the sake of the advertising debates. Cold calling does not come about in a very realistic way and would surely bring down the sales response, and thus the sales leads would come down drastically in the wake of meeting the sales expectations by the sales representatives. This is the right time for IFP to realize where it is going wrong and what corrective methods it must adopt to bring in more sales leads and return clients so that the business grows as a whole and the sales representatives get more customers day in day out. 3. How can Mike Dalton fight the pressure from the more sophisticated integrated systems at one end of the market and the cowboys at the other? What are the implications for both management and the sales force? There are different pressures that IFP has to face in the wake of the different players coming into the market. This means that IFP has to be on guard as per the mushroom companies opening up all the time. The cowboys who bring in more sophisticated systems and technologies seem to play a negative effect on the overall working domains of IFP. The management must enact measures to make sure that the company remains supreme and that all the competitors are taken care of because this remains an important task on the part of IFP to achieve success (Green 1999). The sales force must exactly be told what is expected of them with regards to the enhancing role of the competition and how this competition could be kept away under changing circumstances and differential settings. Mike Dalton has a real task at hand because he needs to be sure of what is expected of them and what meticulously he has to deliver within the midst of things. There is a dire need to comprehend the fact that IFP must tap its market one more time before it allows its sales representatives to throng the market and contact the already established clients as well as the potential customers. There is a requirement to set things right and that too in quick fashion. Much needs to be learned from such an equation because IFP has to sell its products towards different routes and build its base in the long run scheme of things. The sophisticated integrated systems should always be topped up by sound technological incorporations on the part of IFP so that the customers understand that IFP means business and looks after the needs and requirements of the customers. The cowboys so to speak should always be kept at a fair distance because the company has to run its own business and advance further onwards as this is the need of the hour. The implications for the management include the fact that the management has to decide what course of action it must adopt in the wake of growing and more advancing competition. It also has to find out how it will tackle the small players who are opening up their businesses left, right and center, and basically hurting the cause of the organization in more than one way. These cowboys are hurting IFP in the long run as IFP will sooner rather than later realize that it is working as an inoperative company and thus would have to shut down its operations (Caudron 1994). The need of the hour on the part of the management is to realize this space and fill the void by introducing products which are sound and more advanced in the coming days. On the part of the sales force, there is a dire need to realize that success will only come about when it is most desired, and this can only happen in the wake of providing the sales force with the right tools and policies to take care of their needs. The sales force at IFP should be told that there actions and behaviors would be seen in the light of the hard work that they do rather than on focusing on their sales leads which they have to keep on generating repeatedly. The hard work must be paid for so that the employees remain loyal and committed to the cause of imparting organizational knowledge to the customers. Bibliography Arnold, E. (1993). Compensation and Motivation: Maximizing Employee Performance with Behavior-based Incentive Plans. Personnel Psychology, Vol. 46 Caudron, S. (1994). Tie Individual Pay to Team Success. Personnel Journal, Vol. 73, October Chonko, L. (1996). Pay Satisfaction and Sales Force Turnover: The Impact of Different Facets of Pay on Pay Satisfaction and Its Implications for Sales Force Management. Journal of Managerial Issues, Vol. 8 Green, T. (1999). Motivation, Beliefs, and Organizational Transformation. Quorum Books Greene, R. (1993). Compensation and Motivation. Mortgage Banking, Vol. 54, November Gunsch, D. (1991). Award Programs at Work. Personnel Journal, Vol. 70, September Long, R. (2001). Pay Systems and Organizational Flexibility. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Vol. 18 Mulvey, P. (1997). The Managers Workshop: Motivation (Version 1.0). Personnel Psychology, Vol. 50 Weitzul, J. (1993). Sales Force Dynamics: Motives, Management, Money, Marketplace. Quorum Books Read More