Years ago I worked for an electrical wholesaler (seller of electrical goods). We had several outside salespersons at each branch with assigned accounts, mostly electrical contractors as opposed to industrial or government accounts. (One salesman who did not handle contractors at all had all the other two classifications of accounts.) These salesmen called on their accounts in person and typically did most bidding and selling.
During bidding for the electrical components of large jobs, all the electrical contractors would bid to the general contractor for that job, and their bids in turn were based on our and our wholesale competitors' quotes to them for the materials. On a large job, there would typically be a "power" package including panelboards with circuit breakers, and a "lighting" package with all the lighting fixtures and lamps.
The problem is that with all the electrical contractors bidding the same jobs, our salesmen were indirectly competing with one another. If one of your accounts got the job based on your materials bid, you got credit for the sales, of course. We were supposed to quote all contractors the same price for the materials packages, but individual salesmen were sometimes unscrupulous enough to fudge this for their own accounts.
For each job bid one particular salesman would be chosen to view the blueprints and other details at a local service that handled this and then start the ball rolling with the manufacturers to get our costs for the materials. The winning contractor would not necessarily be an account of the salesman who had originally done the work on that job package. Obviously, no one could know in advance who would win the bid. The whole job bid process also meant that salesmen were tied up in the office most days when their very job was to visit their accounts. There seemed to be a lot of duplicate efforts and working at cross purposes in these processes, but our competitors in the electrical wholesale industry were all generally following the same pattern.
In my quotations position, which did not handle job bids, I proposed to the manager that he consider setting up a position to do nothing but job bids to free the outside salesmen to call on accounts and handle their other tasks. I was willing to be that person. He was not interested.
Before I left, there was a great deal of talk within the company of eliminating outside sales positions and going to uncommissioned inside customer service reps to handle all job bids. With this change, each branch would have only one outside sales rep to call on accounts in person, and he would not be involved with bids or quotes. His job would be mainly to "press the flesh" and get the company exposure. Most manufacturers likewise had only one rep in the territory to call on us as a distributor, and some other wholesale industries including plumbing and electronics had done the same thing. Those whose career goal had been to become an outside salesperson, but had not made it yet, heard these rumors, and some left the company when it would not dispel them.
I had mixed feelings about the rumors, but I had decided to leave regardless. It appears that the company has kept much the same arrangement as it had before I left. But not having several outside salesmen competing with one another would have to have some benefit for the company, if it ever were to adopt that system.
I'm familiar with some of Alfie Kohn's material. He directs a great deal of his writing toward schools and children's activities, where he advocated not keeping score in sports games, not keeping track of school valedictorians, etc. The problem is not too much competition in schools, but too little, since most public schools have gone the self-esteem route. Some competition is good, and eliminating it all is a feel-good measure when it comes to kids. We're all competing with others and especially with people in other countries, like it or not, and our kids need to learn to cope with that.
