One of the more interesting developments in sales force management is the use of customer feedback to improve the performance of salespeople. These programs go by a variety of names such as “360-degree feedback,” “customer-conscious compensation,” and “customer satisfaction rewards.” Organizations that have adopted this assessment strategy believe salespeople can benefit from feedback collected from the customers they serve. Also, the information collected can be used by the company to improve customer service.

The use of customer-driven evaluation programs is on the increase because of the rising regard for the role of sales at many companies.

Data collection methodology is not uniform at this point. Some companies use telephone surveys while others use mailed questionnaires. IBM has experimented with a series of in-person meetings that bring together corporate customers, their IBM sales representatives, and the salesperson’s boss. Nowadays, online surveys have gained popularity.

Some salespeople have not welcomed the use of customer evaluations while other have started to warm up to them. Greg Buseman, formerly a Chicago-based IBM salesperson, believes the shift to compensation through customer feedback has improved personal selling at his company.

He now spends more time understanding the customer’s business and learning to be a problem solver for his clients.

Questions

1 Should the customer be given a major voice in determining how salespeople are performing? Explain.
2 Should sales force compensation be linked to customer feedback? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach?
3 Assume you are a sales manager preparing to develop and implement a customer feedback system. How might you gain support for this system from your salespeople?
What data collection method would you use?
4 Research indicates that customers rank “understanding of our business” as an important criterion used to evaluate salespeople. Why is this criterion ranked so high?