Managing the enterprise sales force means communicating and motivating, providing technology resources, and working with channel partners. Sam Abdelnour, Whirlpool’s vice president of sales in North America, manages a sales force of 700. He worked his way up at Whirlpool, where he has been employed for 32 years, including 10 years in his current position.

Whirlpool’s sales force is organized by channels. Some cover such big-box accounts as Sears, Lowe’s, Best Buy, and Home Depot, and some traditional channels cover independent and small retailers, new families, and homes. “Around 500 or 600 sales reps are in the marketplace, with the rest in our headquarters,” Abdelnour explains.

Each channel has a general manager who reports to Abdelnour. Big-box teams align with their customers’ buying staff, with one person each assigned to the buyer, the marketing person, the supply-chain manager, and so forth. The traditional channel has 500 reps working out of their homes. These reps call on customers by walking floors and visiting warehouses.

Goals, Goals, Goals

Abdelnour sets monthly, quarterly, and annual sales and market-share goals for all reps. “Unless you track market share, you do not know how well you are doing against the competition,” he emphasizes. Channel managers hold conference calls with reps every week, and Abdelnour holds a quarterly, two-hour conference call with the entire sales force. During those calls, he stresses two or three objectives for the coming quarter, seeking tight focus on a few goals rather than on a lengthy list of objectives.

The first part of the quarterly call is conducted by phone, with slides shown on a company Website so reps can follow the presentation. The last half hour is dedicated to taking questions from the field, and anyone whose question is not answered can contact Abdelnour by email or voicemail afterward. Twice a year, Abdelnour meets all his reps face-to-face – and they meet each other – at national conferences.

“Salespeople have to be self motivators. I expect them to get up in the morning fired up with clear ideas and goals,” Abdelnour explains. Nevertheless, channel and regional managers must keep things moving forward for their teams. Abdelnour participates briefly in weekly channel calls to make sure this is happening.

“The teams help motivate each other. Everyone has to do his or her job for us to be successful,” he explains.

Contests and Incentives

In addition to performance-based compensation, there are numerous sales contests and incentives. Ten years ago, there were more sales contests than there are today, but Whirlpool now uses fewer “rifle shots” to focus attention on the most important sales goals, as the quarterly calls currently serve this purpose.

Training is a huge challenge, as Whirlpool must train not only its own reps but the tens of thousands of salespeople at channel-partner companies. Brand Academy, a proprietary online training system, is available to reps and partners for both product and sales-skill training. Employees take lessons online and are certified after successful completion. In addition, 200 Whirlpool reps train partner reps face-to-face in the early mornings before stores open or at conferences nearby.

All Whirlpool reps have notebook computers and cell phones, and many carry personal digital assistants and BlackBerrys. Customers are asked to cosign and grade each rep’s visit so Whirlpool knows how often reps see customers and how well they serve them. This communication is two-way: Reps use these tools to get immediate responses to customer questions. “Nowadays, customers do not expect reps to know all the answers, but they do expect reps to have answers at their fingertips,” Abdelnour says.

Whirlpool recruits most new reps from colleges or related sales-education programs. Recruits are trained and brought on board using a unique program, Real Whirld. They live, learn, and keep house together in a nine-bedroom house dedicated to their new careers. When not learning how to sell products during the day, they use Whirlpool, Amana, and Maytag appliances to cook, clean, and wash. They even serve meals to teams of Whirlpool reps on special nights.

The Real Whirld program, now 10 years old, helped Abdelnour recruit a more diverse sales force; 60 percent are women or minorities, aligned with the demographics of channel partners and ultimate consumers. And Real Whirld has two other major benefits: First, the company has retained 80 percent of the reps brought on board by the program. Second, “the young group of salespeople brings amazing energy to the others,” Abdelnour says. “Some of our veteran reps have taken a look at themselves and asked, ‘What happened to me?’”

Accuracy, Tools, and Time Management

“Managers of a large sales force must make their top-line sales forecasts much more refined because that drives everything else,” says Ken Thoreson, managing partner of Acumen Management. Publicly owned firms must credibly forecast sales for their directors and the public, and production and distribution departments also need accurate forecasts. Thoreson says this requires a dashboard and metrics, plus a solid CRM system to understand how activities relate to sales and what activities occur at the regional, district, and even individual levels.

“You must use Web conferencing, instant messaging, and other communications to motivate the entire sales force.” Thoreson argues. “If you just communicate to the next level down, the message gets diluted.”

Video conferencing allows top management to communicate, motivate, and talk about the competition. This method of communication is essential to enforce company policies on the kinds of commitment reps can make and what sort of approvals they need.

An enterprise sales force requires more training on corporate operations, such as completing expense reports. Extensive onboard training was once common at large organizations but is less so today. Thoreson recommends extensive professional development with annual certification in sales skills. These skills must be specific because large companies break the selling process into smaller steps, focusing reps on the highest-value customer contacts.

The Personal Touch

Maintaining personal contact is critical when motivating an enterprise sales force. “You do not want your salespeople to feel like they are cogs in a machine,” Thoreson stresses. Sales contests at regional and national levels are common because recognition is more important in a large sales force.

Thoreson continues, “Bring people together so they know each other and can work together. That’s harder in a large sales force.” The VP of sales must make face-to-face contact at regional conferences to explain the vision and mission and get reps excited.

Constant direct communication is tough. “The top three challenges are time management, time management, time management,” Thoreson acknowledges. “But you must make time, or you will get everything filtered through middle managers.”

He urges sales leaders to spend no more than 10 days a month at headquarters; the rest of the time should be spent with major prospects, field managers, and reps. “And you must set quarterly and annual priorities, or you will get dragged into things that do not advance the mission.”

Standardization around the ideal profile is essential in recruiting reps for a large sales force. This means online assessments and structured interviews. Thoreson adds, “And make sure the selection process is followed all the time, not just 50 percent of the time.”

A large sales force also needs a “deselection” process with standards, metrics, and firm decision points. Thoreson sums it up neatly: “It is easy for a mediocre rep to hide in a large organization.”