Flibbertigibbet

Fun With Analogies: Sales is to Operations as the Antelope is to the Leopard

Our sales force drives me crazy sometimes. Strike that. They drive me crazy on a daily basis.

I try to help them. I try to teach them. I try to explain to them where the prices of our products comes from and why they can't just give things away and expect us to stay in business. But they do not listen.

I realize that part of my hatred for them comes from the fact that I am in an Operations department and the relationship between Sales and Operations is a long-standing love-hate thing like Whitney and Bobby.

But for real. They don't even understand some of the most basic economic concepts behind their job.

First, they don't understand the difference between the words "price" and "cost." This irritates me a LOT. PRICE is the ratio of VALUE and COST. Value is a qualitative term, which we quantify in terms of PROFIT. Cost is a quantitative term.

So, how much profit do you make per unit of cost (labor, materials, etc.) and you have the price.

Sure, there are lots and lots of instances where you can use the words price and cost interchangeably, but these people demonstrably do not know when they're in those situations and when they aren't.

Sales people are constantly telling me about how we're going to magically produce some product or another at "no cost." "Oh reeeeeaaallly?" I think. Because, seriously, they're talking about magic and I don't know magic.

And, then, they come to me and act like developers are the only resources contributing to costs. Hi! Remember me? My role as sales support is part of the allocated costs. But that's the problem: they don't understand allocated costs. They don't understand that every widget X has to pay a portion of the electric bill. They don't understand that each little sproket we make has to pay a part of my boss' salary.

Oh. And they don't understand transition costs, either! They seem to believe that if I'm making 1,000 widgets right now and they ask me to make one more that it costs the same to make 1 widget if I'm involved in making 1,000 sprockets right now. They don't understand that stopping everything and picking up to do something else costs time, energy, and MONEY.

I really do think that all sales people should take a series of classes in managerial accounting before they sit down with a discount calculator. Sadly, some sales people value being liked more than they value being employed and as a result they try to run the company into the ground.

This make-a me crazy