There's a divide in my team today and it's causing tension on all our conference calls. I'm a Territory Sales Manager (basically sales rep) for a big consumer packaged goods company and obviously we can't visit grocery/retail stores now. We have been getting by with making phone calls and e-mails but we basically deal with 5 main "banners" (think Wal-mart, Whole Foods etc...) and 3 of the 5 have now asked us not to communicate by e-mail either - presumably every company is doing the same as us and they're getting inundated with useless sales-y emails that they have no interest in dealing with right now.
That means of my 125 customers, I can realistically talk to about 40 right now. They've also instituted these expectations that we make a minimum of 12 calls per day, which are being logged in our iPads. We send in a daily report of what we do every day as well to "improve processes" and "add value" that gets sent up the chain to show what we're worth.
Reading between the lines, I think they know we're not talking to 60 people a week when we are only allowed to reach 40 customers - but they want those numbers in the system. In other words, they can't come right out and tell us to fake it, but if we fake it and keep those numbers in there, the higher ups will be happy and we can keep working from home as long as we add value in the daily report.
8/10 people in my job in this region are on board with this, but the other two won't shut up and play the game and it's causing issues. The one guy brings up every time how we can't sell on the phone and we're not influencing anything and it's all pointless. Then about five of us all offer up suggestions for what we can still do. Another, our most "veteran" rep, is just such a keener that she will keep pushing for more and more to do and in doing so tells everyone that we don't have enough to fill our days. The majority of us are trying to do some work, take courses, calling each other daily etc... just not doing anything that draws a spotlight on to how many of the 8 hours we're actively working.
We have heard that our primary products are seeing big sales increases, so our side of the business (which is the larger part of the company) is booming but there is another side that is more food service oriented - with heavy focus on offices, pubs and bars, so that side is obviously taking a big hit.
Anyway, still working for now but I wish people would just recognize the situation, put their head down, be quiet, do what they're asked and keep the status quo. So, this is just my venting, good luck to others in this uncertainty.
