One of the most critical and important employees in many firms — especially B2B companies — is the sales representative. Unfortunately, some firms do not appreciate or recognize all of the issues that may make their sales rep jobs especially challenging.
As reported by Anum Hussain for HupSpot:
“Sales reps have a lot of responsibilities. Along with selling — which is, of course, what they were hired to do — they’re also expected to spend time researching accounts, generating leads, attending meetings, plugging away at administrative tasks, and so on. Where does staying on top of marketing materials fit in? As a former member of HubSpot’s content team, I know the hard work that goes into creating valuable offers and then distributing them to sales teams with talking points, sharable tweets, and so on. But there are so many hours in a salesperson’s day, and it can be really hard to keep up with the content. As a result, over 40% of marketing materials don’t end up getting used by B2B sales teams.”
The excellent infographic below from Qvidian (a cloud-based sales execution solutions provider) “walks through a day in the life of a modern B2B sales rep, highlighting the challenges that pop up along the way.”
I have been a B2B sales rep selling to hospitals for over 28 years. This post is correct – over the years, companies have downsized both marketing, admin, and technical service positions. The field B2B sales rep now picks up the slack for all the downsized positions. At the same time – companies have assigned unrealistic quotas and have gone to a salary plus commission compensation package. The companies have the philosophy that “we are paying you a base salary and providing benefits; therefore, you need to handle other tasks aside from day to day sales”.
My prediction is that if this trend keeps up many B2B field positions will look more like what is present in the consumer auto industry sales. “Salespeople” being compensated more on salary – 80% and only 20% commission.
Most large companies now pay bigger bonuses to “:C-Suite” executives versus the field sales team, even though the field sales team drives revenue growth.
Rich Laskin