How good are managers at evaluating sales problems?

W.E. Deming contended that employees want to perform their jobs well but that work-related barriers often prevent them from doing so. Consequently, Deming encouraged managers to seek out and remove the barriers that hinder performance (1986). Deming's philosophies strongly influenced multitudes

A better knowledge of the problems facing salespeople and their relative importance could lead to corrective action to improve the way firms manage and structure the sales function. However, despite the potential benefits for improved performance, little work has examined the problems occurring in sales units, the impact of these problems on performance, and whether managers are skilled at prioritizing problems so that corrective actions may be taken. The research presented here follows in the tradition of Deming by attempting to better understand sales problems, their impact on performance, and a manager's ability to assess sales-related problems.

Although examining problems is a worthy goal, the elusive nature of problems makes the task somewhat daunting. As we discuss in the next section, what seems to be a problem to one person will not appear to be a problem to another. This subjectivity in the identification and interpretation of problems makes it quite challenging to effectively target the most significant problems for managerial attention. Furthermore, research has shown that individuals are subject to information processing biases that systematically affect the way they interpret events (Bradley 1978; Curren, Folkes, and Steckel 1992). Thus, sales managers may tend to misattribute performance outcomes such that the truly important problems remain undetected. That is, the problems perceived to be the most troubling may not in fact be the problems that have the largest negative impact on performance.

THE PROBLEM WITH PROBLEMS

A variety of issues and challenges must be surmounted when examining the impact of sales-related problems on performance. These challenges include: (1) the appropriate definition of "what is a problem"; (2) the appropriate unit of analysis for studying sales problems; and (3) the human information processing biases that make individuals imperfect evaluators of problems. In this section we discuss these challenges and present insights from the literature that shed light on these issues. Finally, we put forward two research propositions to help us examine the impact of sales-related problems on performance.