Point: Salespeople and Senior Management: Not a “Match Made in Heaven”

Abstract

However, one topic evokes a surprisingly high proportion of negative responses on both objective items (scaled) and subjective questions (a personal interview or written comments) management. A very significant proportion of salespeople responding to surveys recently administered in three companies strongly disagreed with statements such as management cares about my well being, I have confidence in decisions made by top management, and senior management appreciates the input of the sales force. In these cases, the very significant proportion of negative responses ranged between 26 percent and 40 percent of all respondents. Salespeople's impressions, obtained through both personal interviews and responses to open-ended questions, corroborated the empirically-derived data. Salespeople from all three companies studied expressed dismay at lack of attention from management, lack of caring on the part of management, upper management's failure to get input from the field, and upper management's overconcern with the 'almighty buck.* Despite this negativity, in all three cases salespeople reflected a fairly high level of commitment to the company. They were relatively satisfied with the sales job. They reflected no greater stress or perceived conflict than have salespeople surveyed in earlier studies reported in marketing and sales journals. In summary, the salespeople seemingly