Some might call it eavesdropping, but we call it our uniquely unscientific methodology for tracking distributor trends. We listen. Plus, we get phone calls, emails and occasional text messages from distributors. When we hear the same topic mentioned more than a dozen times in the course of a month, we know the topic is coming to the surface. For some reason, the topic of sales compensation is showing up --- repeatedly. Here are a few questions I believe are pertinent to any thinking directed to the topic. Point One: Do you see you sales efforts becoming more team focused? • Do you see your business employing more or fewer people in the sales function in five years? (Potential new positions might be Specialists, Project Managers, Customer Crib/VMI maintainers, Tele-sales, Application Engineers and others.) • Do you believe a well-developed team could sell more than semi-autonomous salespeople? • Do you believe your current outside sales force will be or should be part ...

A recent article in Industrial Distribution covered a couple of points on salaries.  I thought it was worth sharing. Grads from Texas A&M's Distribution program are getting multiple job offers and that impacts starting salaries : Another top-notch university, Texas A&M, has an outstanding industrial distribution program and on its website points out that every student in its ID program had a job at graduation. Many of those students were offered jobs in sales engineering and sales management. The graduates received an average of three job offers, and the average starting salary was $52,000 with some receiving up to $70,000. The article quotes the Wall Street Journal on sales compensation: S ales reps who peddle technical and scientific products earned a median annual wage of $74,970 in 2012, more than twice the median for all workers, according to the Labor Department. A competitive hiring market for science a...