The salesforce observability map
Observe work early enough to coach it, and keep late outcomes within their attribution boundary.
| Control question | Observable object | Coaching use | Outcome boundary | Reward risk | Unresolved evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What work happened? | Declared selling behavior | Review sequence and quality | Behavior is not revenue | Counting replaces judgement | Is the behavior relevant? |
| What was knowable? | Information available at the time | Correct a process or handoff | Hindsight is excluded | Missing information is punished | Was the information usable? |
| What result arrived? | Outcome and horizon | Review conditions and response | External drivers remain visible | Outcome bears all blame | Which drivers were controllable? |
| What should change? | Effectiveness purpose | Adjust support or supervision | Change is tested later | Reward is changed first | What evidence would disconfirm it? |
Swipe or scroll horizontally if the table is wider than your screen.
Reference & Evidence
Source: Author's synthetic framework grounded in Cravens, Ingram, LaForge and Young (1993), de Oliveira Santini et al. (2019), and Ghosh and John (2000). The rows are illustrative and do not describe a current salesforce scorecard.
Each line is a claim from the register this journal publishes against, resolved from the register at build time.
- A The design, and it is a test of someone else's propositions: "the authors develop a conceptual model depicting relationships between salesforce control systems, characteris"tics, performance and effectiveness "as a framework for testing the propositions formulated by Anderson and Oliver (1987)", with "a study of 144 diverse sales organizations" Cravens, Ingram, LaForge & Young. (1993) ·
CLY93-C1 - A The finding runs against the intuition: "the results imply a limited role for incen"tive compensation "in salesforce control systems" Cravens, Ingram, LaForge & Young. (1993) ·
CLY93-C2 - A And what they call for instead: "they also suggest the need for a proper blend between field sales management and compensation control and identify important avenues for future research" Cravens, Ingram, LaForge & Young. (1993) ·
CLY93-C3 - A "this paper conducts a meta-analysis based on 104 studies" of sales control systems de Oliveira Santini, Vieira, Ladeira & Sampaio. (2019) ·
OSV19-C1 - A The named relationships are the paper's own list: "significant relationships between behaviour- and outcome-based control systems and the complexity of the products, bonuses, financial performance, sales innovation, organizational support and satisfaction with supervisors" de Oliveira Santini, Vieira, Ladeira & Sampaio. (2019) ·
OSV19-C2 - A Each wins somewhere, and the paper says where: "behaviour-based control systems were the most effective mechanism in turbulent markets and for determining financial performance", while "outcome-based control systems were the most efficient instrument for complex products" de Oliveira Santini, Vieira, Ladeira & Sampaio. (2019) ·
OSV19-C3 - A "we conducted three experiments to investigate three unresolved predictions involving the incentive-insurance trade-off posited in the model", against a literature where "empirical support remains sketchy" Ghosh & John. (2000) ·
GJ00-C1 - A The first prediction, and the condition it needs: "compensation should be less incentive loaded with greater effort-output uncertainty so as to provide additional insurance to a risk-averse agent", supported "but only when risk-averse agents undertook nonverifiable effort" Ghosh & John. (2000) ·
GJ00-C2 - A The second prediction failed: "when verifiable effort made incentives moot, as is the case for the second prediction, the model failed to order the data", which is why this is conditional support and not a rule Ghosh & John. (2000) ·
GJ00-C3
Grades: A, verified against the printed page of the primary source · B, primary source, text layer only · C, authoritative secondary · D, reported.
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The salesforce control-blend matrix
From the essay Salesforce control is a blend, not a commission plan
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The variable-pay risk-design card
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Why does salesforce control begin with observable behaviors rather than commercial results?
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