Then, Skinner tested to find out what would happen if the rats were punished by giving a slight electric shock when they tapped the lever. Like you might imagine, he found out that the rats rapidly stopped performing the behavior that was punished and never tapped the lever again, even when the food was in sight of the rats.

This situation is exactly what happens for several salespeople when managers pass judgment on, or do not commend, productive activities like telephone prospecting, computer database skills, and comparable beneficial jobs. For instance, a salesperson that has a remarkable month of prospecting packed with several sales appointments, but does not reach the sales goals is many times criticized by a manager who does not acknowledge the long-term seeds being set. The manager, not bearing in mind that the seeds of sales frequently take months to sprout, ignores the positive contributions of his employee. By pointing out the wrong things of the performance, the manager unintentionally sends a message of negative reinforcement to the salesperson. Not only has the manager not rewarded a desired behavior, he has possibly stopped it with the "electric shock" of criticism. To sum up, the sales manager is now a piece of the problem because he is disrupting good behavior.

One organization punished salespeople for not maintaining their margins and, simultaneously, insisted that the salespeople "never lose a sale because of price". So, if they maintained the price, they may lose sales; if they lowered the price, they lowered the margins. The salespeople were in a lose-lose situation in which they would literally be scolded whether they made a sale (at low margins) or not (by failing to reduce margins)!

However, many sales managers are wise observers of behavior and manage to find time to commend competent performance. A vice-president of sales for one Chicago-based lumberyard time after time rewards and praises his sales managers for taking chances, even if the outcome is not profitable. He wants to implant an entrepreneurial attitude in his employees and his reward system goes with his value system. The outcome of his plan was a remarkable increase in sales margins within a year of his taking on the new position and a good quality sales management team.

Another manager at an East Coast lumberyard directs his sales team's hard work toward smaller, high-margin accounts. Salespeople are commended for finding and pursuing these accounts. Actually, when salespeople brag of possible sales to large-volume accounts, they get no recognition on their prospecting records for these efforts. The outcome has been wonderful for this dealer, which has a firm foundation of small and mid-sized accounts that have formed amazing margins and solidity for the company.