Input and Output Driven Sales Personnel Performance Measures: Insights from an Experiment

It is a globally accepted strategy that, retaining existing consumers is significantly cost
effective than focussing on acquiring new consumers. In brick-and-mortar retailing, sales
personnel play the most important and complex role whereby they are the ones who are
connected to consumers directly on a real-time basis. It is observed that the majority of brickand-
mortar retailers in India use measures to measure sales personnel performance which is
mathematically derived numbers viz. average transaction value (ATV), average basket size
(ABS) and contribution margin percentage (GM%) and these are all output driven measures.
Such output driven measures are making the sales personnel’s role furthermore complex and
in turn, their focus is expected to have shifted from consumer needs to these output driven
measures set by their management. In this research, we have carried out an experiment using
input driven measures viz. category invoice penetration (CIP) and invoices/bills generated by
the sales personnel per day and evaluated the change in (a) sales personal attitude towards
consumer orientation and (b) overall store profitability.