Requiem for a sales force that built and believed in the brand
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, January 6, 2008
These days, when I get an e-mail with an attachment from someone I worked with many years ago, there's usually a punch line somewhere at the end of the message.
But the one I got this morning delivered only a punch.
The attachment was an MP3 recording of a conference call held in December, when management at Thomasville told its sales force the company no longer had a sales force, terminating their employment.
The recording is 3 minutes and 43 seconds long, and starts with a roll call of about 21 names. By the looks of the e-mail, this was the seventh time it had been forwarded, and at least 100 others had gotten it before I had seen it.
I was the field sales manager at Thomasville in the mid-1990s, working there from 1994 to 1999. I expected to hear a few names that were familiar, but having been gone for over eight years, I thought I might know only half of them at best, as the recent turbulent times in the furniture industry have caused more than its share of personnel movements.
To my surprise, virtually every name was of someone I had known long ago. All told, 18 of the 21 names I heard were people I had worked with.
In some ways, hearing those names was like attending a class reunion, with each one sparking a great memory. And virtually all of them had been with Thomasville for more than five years when I got there in 1994. So this was a senior, experienced group of people.
As everyone now knows, Thomasville announced it had changed its business model and eliminated the role of the marketing rep. That's essentially what the group was told. An HR person briefly went over a few key points, the group was thanked for all of its contributions, then all were told, "This now concludes our call."
For decades, these folks built Thomasville's business. It took only 3:43 to end it all.
I certainly understand what some at Thomasville were thinking. Anyone who has ever spent more than a few moments in a senior management position in this industry has looked at what a sales force costs and wondered if they were getting their money's worth.
Even back in the 1990s, there were arguments over certain reps earning huge sales commissions off a small number of accounts, which only existed because of management intervention to set up programs. "Why do we need to pay that money?" was a constant query.
The answer, we found, was that in order to build your brand, you needed to keep broadcasting a constant message. One, via television, radio, the newspaper or the Internet, was the external message.
The other message — that we as management knew what we were doing — came from and through the sales force.
When I joined Thomasville in 1994, I had no idea that eight months later the vice president of sales I worked for would be fired; or that eight months after that the executive vice president he worked for would resign; and roughly eight more months from then the president would be gone.
During that time Thomasville was sold by Armstrong World to Furniture Brands. The sales force, under the direction of new owners, was moved from commission to salary, then back to commission when that blew up.
We introduced minimum retail pricing, changed the vision and requirements of a Thomasville store multiple times, and seemed to consistently come up with a new idea or program that appeared to reverse an earlier strategy.
Through it all, the one constant was the sales force. Yes, we had some characters who acted like the sales force owned the company, but through all the changes, they kept the dealer base calm. They brought in ideas from the field to keep the product fresh. They sold the Thomasville culture to the endless wave of new retail salespeople who showed up every month at Thomasville stores and galleries.
They believed that Thomasville was the premier name in the industry, and while teetering toward arrogance every now and then, acted as the keepers of the flame, doing the best they could to ensure that image continued. They maintained relationships on a local level so well, it made it easy to come to town and develop a relationship of your own with dealers.
I left the industry two years ago, and I have no ax to grind with Thomasville management. But I can't help but be nostalgic for the Thomasville sales force.
In today's industry, the ability to start a company on a handshake and a sourcing agreement has created much more of a free-agent mentality for everyone on the sales end of the equation. The notion of a sales force that believes in their brand as fiercely as Thomasville's did, I'm afraid, is one that will rarely if ever be seen again.
It's why, when I read in Furniture/Today that Thomasville had dismissed its sales force, I told a friend that it felt a little like losing a member of the family.
Today's e-mail brought me the audio of the funeral.
Dave Scarangella, former Thomasville executive
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