Trying to bring organization to the organization

[Brutus Brewer]

I work for a smallish rubber manufacturer in the sales department. There are 3 of us in sales all together with a customer list of about 1000 that we will ship to in a years time. The majority of the time we are all in the office, but there are about 35 days per year where my boss and I travel together. When a phone call comes in the ladies answering the phone are free to assign the call to whomever they want, they have no direction on who to give calls to whatsoever.

I have been lobbying for a system where the list is split into 3 with each sales person responsible for one segment, pretty simple and straight forward and certainly nothing revolutionary. Every time I bring this up to the bosses they want no part of it, especially my immediate boss. His boss would go for parts of it, but doesn't want to "step on anyone's toes" and tell him what to do. Isn't that what you're supposed to do when you're the boss?

Anyway, I'm curious how other organizations structure their sales/customer service departments. Does anyone have suggestions that I could use to sway my bosses? I would have thought greater efficiency, a more thorough knowledge of your customer, or a myriad of other things that a more organized staff would have created would've been convincing enough but apparently not.

 

[BrewinJack]

i have tried many ways of convincing other people to my view, in your case the best way to show that things will work better the way you have thought them out is to have the system completely and utterly break down as it is. then when the old system fails and there must be change... 2 problems with this...

1: its sneaky and under handed and if it screws up you could get fired, heck even if it works you could get fired

2: Your system better damn well work perfectly because if it fails shortly after the failure of the old system then your system will get passed by, and you might even get fired

I have done it, granted my job was never on the line when i did it. But i have had some sucess and some failure with this way of bringing people round. Actully i have found it works best when the old system doesnt actully fail, it just appears to everybody to have failed, that way nobody can actully blame anyone. this brings a 3rd problem

3: its very delicate and complex and requires you to manipulate people you work with everyday and if they realize what your doing, they wont respect you and you may get fired

Also if it works its very hard to resist temptation to do it again, and again, and again... it gives one a since of power and that power can be abused... i wouldnt recomend it unless your really really unhappy with the way things are... or just by chance you see it happening of its own accord and cna parley it to you advantage

cheers

 

[arturo7]

So if the sales guys spend most of their time in the office, who's bangin' on doors looking for new business?