I was working for a large uniform company in Northeast Philadelphia. I was a Service Manager and part of the responsibilities for my team were to do installations of uniforms and facility services for our sales team. What that meant was that when a sales rep sold a contract to a new account, my team would go to that account and install the products that the client had bought. It was a standard practice for our sales team to say to a client, “Try this product for free until you install, and if you dont need it the install team will take it back”. A good example would be an additional floor mat or a bathroom air freshener. What the sales team was doing was then adding that product to the invoice and when my service team showed up to install the product we had to credit the customer. The reason for this was the sales rep was paid a commission for the value of the first invoice, and the more products on that invoice the higher their commission. My service team and myself were given a quarterly bonus and a large portion of that plan was tied to the amount of credits that we issued, the more we issued, the less we would receive in bonus. Essentially, what the sales reps were doing was taking money out of my teams pockets and making new customers have a poor experience because they were issued a credit.
I initially had a conversation with the Sales manager and his response was that he was also given a commission on the first install and he was not going to stop. I spoke with my manager,the GM of the facility and he did not do anything to stop the practice. What I told my team to do was zero out the account for the initial invoice. It was not a “credit” in the system, because we essentially changed the invoice to zero dollars. Once the invoice was zeroed out, the sale rep and sales manager would not receive any commission for the sale. It took about two weeks of zeroing out invoices and the sales team receiving no commissions for the Sales manager to see things my way and put an end to the practice or letting customers try things for free.
I believe in honesty and integrity. If you saw you are going to do something, than do it. I like to think that I role model that belief.