Chapter 12
Measuring Relationships with Salespeople, Channel Partners, and Franchisees
“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”
—George Bernard Shaw
If management is from Mars (see the introduction to the Glossary) and the rest of us are from Venus, then salespeople are from a different solar system altogether. Whether they’re your own internal sales force, franchisees, or channel partners, they are very distinctly “other,” isolated either by geography, legal standing, or responsibility. Unlike PR people, who spend most of their waking hours worrying about the media or their internal clients, salespeople spend all their waking hours, and most of their sleeping ones as well, worrying about the customer.
Over the years, as my companies have developed several ways of measuring relationships with salespeople, we have had to take into account their very different perspective. First of all, you can anticipate their attitude to be: “I’m expected to spend my time selling, but the home office deluges me with new products and new information that I’m supposed to find time to read and talk about with the clients. And then, of course, the really important stuff the home office never tells you about; you have to find that out from the local papers, the customers or, worse yet, the competition.” Yes, we have heard of at least one salesperson who actually ...
