Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Highthief, I have to respectfully disagree. One of the most effective tools a salesman has is his travel & entertainment expense. Now in this case its a bit flipped because the salesmen are the ones being wined and dined, but that's a production incentive. In this case the company is selling to the salespeople to increase production. I have been the target of that dozens of times. It rarely works on me since my experience has always been that steering business always ends badly, but it does work for others.
|
I understand what you are saying but the fact is that you cannot comp salespeople above their comp plan (which in most big companies is pretty generous to begin with) in times of severe fiscal crisis - when no one else, no matter how hard they work, is going to get a bonus and staff are being laid off, the salespeople have to make do with their comp plan. Here it is quite generous for exceeding sales quotas. But it has always been thus here - we have a mature company with a sound philosophy - when times are good, everyone enjoys, when times are hard, everyone cuts back from the top on down.
And in the specific situation discussed, that of AIG, well, the optics were awful.