Management is very short-sighted and expectations are as if the PEO service is a transactional sale with an office manager (like ADP Payroll) rather than a strategic sale with a business owner that takes months (at a minimum) to complete and implement.
Competing Business Units - Competition was more stiff for appts and deals with other ADP business units than it was against our outside PEO competition. Customers and prospects were inundated with calls from all different units on a weekly basis and were confused by who represented which service and many tuned out.
This is a tough and complex sale both internally (there is an acceptance process) and externally (business owner must break a number of existing vendor relationships at once). Companies that want the service the most are the hardest for TotalSource to accept (due to Health Insurance and Workers Comp Risk).
There is a finite number of businesses that are even eligible for the service so once a territory is penetrated, gaining new, legitimate appointments is very difficult. I found that almost all of the companies that were "good fits" in my territory had heard the pitch within the past year or two of when I began and did not want to talk about it again. I'm sure this would be different in a new market for TotalSource.
The weekly pressure to obtain an unrealistic number of quality appointments with new prospects was frustrating for everyone, so people end up booking any appointment they can get just to get management off their back. The result is high turnover; in my region many DMs would stay on for the first year, collect the fair salary and ramp and move on to a different division or company.
