Is your sales system clogged with accumulated gunk?

Clean the system so salespeople can actually sell.

Recently, one of the salespeople with whom I was working with just happened to mention that he often obtained demonstration samples by coming into the office, visiting the warehouse, opening a box of the product he wanted to sell, taking one out, and re-closing the box.

As you can imagine, this gave the warehouse manager fits. However, there were more consequences to this practice than a furious warehouse manager. This is an example of sales system gunk!

What's gunk? It's any practice that detracts from the salesperson spending time with customers.

When we boil down the job of the typical outside salesperson to its essence, it is clear that we want one thing from them. The one place that they bring value to the organization -- and the one thing they do that is the essential reason we have them -- is to interact with customers. Everything else should be a means to that end.