Improving Performance of Sales Reps

Scott and Townsend explored how three factors related to each other to stimulate the performance of sales reps: goal difficulty, a person’s general feeling of competency, and a person’s expectations of success for a specific sales goal. They wanted to resolve a contradiction between two theories involving goal difficulty.

People striving to achieve difficult goals usually out perform those working toward less challenging goals. Yet as goals become more difficult, their expectations of actually meeting them declines. One theory claims this lower expectation of success will lead to lower performance, the other theory, involving difficult goals, points to improved performance. Scott and Townsend wanted to find out which was right.

The manufacturing firm had divided its sales force into 17 industrial and consumer product divisions and based a substantial portion of sales rep’s pay on performance (20% to 50%). Sales territories within each division were divided in a manner to try to equalize potential earnings, and goals were set by management for each sales rep. Incentive pay and performance appraisal ratings hinged on sales reps’ achievement of these goals. Yet the company wanted improvement and hoped the researchers’ findings would guide them.

Scott and Townsend learned that the best predictor of performance for these sales reps was a simple, direct relationship between a person’s general feelings of competency and goal difficulty. So for this group, performance is best when both factors are high: those with both strong feelings of competency and difficult goals did the best. The expectations of success for the immediate goal did not have an important effect.

For the manufacturing firm, this finding pointed out weaknesses in their management of their sales reps and pointed to directions to take to improve their performance. Since general feelings of competency were so important, they learned that enhancing these feelings was a crucial step in improving their performance.

Having identified this factor, the company was challenged to learn ways to enhance this quality in their sales reps. One suggestion offered by Scott and Townsend involves giving people many success experiences and calling attention to them with recognition from their superiors. They also suggest using simple attitude measures of general self confidence in the company’s hiring process and selecting people who score highly.

The company also learned their practice of assigning goals was not stimulating the best performance. Scott and Townsend suggested they give greater consideration to the self confidence factor in determining appropriate goals. It may also be helpful to engage the ambitions of individual sales reps and ask them to help set these goals.

The image emerging from this research brings to mind the relationship between coaches and athletes. Coaches encourage their athletes and then challenge them to do something they’ve never done before, like reaching personal bests and then exceeding them. With success, their confidence builds, their goals become more difficult, and their performance improves. Managers can keep this image in mind to guide them as they seek out the successes of their people, call attention to them, and then work with them to establish challenging goals. Over time, performance will improve.

Reference: Scott, K. Dow, and Anthony Townsend (1992) A test of Eden‘s expectancy goal difficulty model among sales representatives. Paper represented at the meetings of the Academy of Management, Las Vegas, Nevada.