After a short stint as a booking salesman assigned to directly serve the hospital accounts, my boss assigned me to handle a distributor. This new task practically overwhelmed me. It was my first time to manage a distributor account. I was a consistent sales quota buster and I didn’t understand why my boss called this career move a reward for my good performance. I also had very little idea why our company had to sell to our non-key accounts through distributors and not directly through own sales force. I didn’t even know how distributors operate their business but my office calls me a distributor manager.” – Bothered Mike “My boss measures my performance based on how much I sold to my distributor and how fast I collected from them. Period! My boss never bothered to ask me how much my distributor sells to customers, to which customers, how many customers, and how much money my distributor makes. He didn’t care as long as I hit my targets. As my monthly targets became higher, I invented and reinvented more ways to dump stocks into my distributor’s warehouse. It really infuriates my distributor. What can I do? After all, my boss constantly “reminds” everyone that we’re only as good as our last performance.” – Bewildered Ron What is common in both of Mike’s and Ron’s situations? What could have prepared Mike and Ron to become better channel managers?
“After a short stint as a booking salesman assigned to directly serve the hospital accounts, my boss assigned me to handle a distributor. This new task practically overwhelmed me. It was my first time to manage a distributor account. I was a consistent sales quota buster and I didn’t understand why my boss called this career move a reward for my good performance. I also had very little idea why our company had to sell to our non-key accounts through distributors and not directly through own sales force. I didn’t even know how distributors operate their business but my office calls me a distributor manager.” – Bothered Mike
“My boss measures my performance based on how much I sold to my distributor and how fast I collected from them. Period! My boss never bothered to ask me how much my distributor sells to customers, to which customers, how many customers, and how much money my distributor makes. He didn’t care as long as I hit my targets. As my monthly targets became higher, I invented and reinvented more ways to dump stocks into my distributor’s warehouse. It really infuriates my distributor. What can I do? After all, my boss constantly “reminds” everyone that we’re only as good as our last performance.” – Bewildered Ron
- What is common in both of Mike’s and Ron’s situations? What could have prepared Mike and Ron to become better channel managers?
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