I think the problem's origin is twofold:<p>1. Salesmen come in two stripes- poodles and pigs. The poodle is nice, courteous, and will do what you ask it to. Most salespeople are poodles. Pigs, on the other hand, are aggressive, will stick their nose in to wherever, have no use for courtesy, aren't afraid of offending anybody, and are self-driving. They're relentless, and they convince you the only way to get them to go away is to buy. You can't turn a poodle into a pig. There are a lot of poodles out there to fill sales jobs, and not as many pigs. You may want to beat them both to death, but for polar opposite reasons.<p>2. Sales managers set up these flows, and they hire poodles to follow the flows. Company ownership is out to lunch and doesn't test out their own sales flow. It's incompetence on a higher level and it's a major factor in why weak companies fail. Compare the sales manager at a successful automobile dealership and the one in this company- the more daylight you see between them, the worse the staffing decision.<p>I see it written that salespeople can't be bothered with piddly sample orders, but the fact is that samples today are six-figure orders next month and career-makers the following year. Sometimes the incentive structure is obviously a problem- in some orgs a senior sales rep can snatch the customer the peon spends 6 months developing, along with any incentives. The peon thus does the bare minimum until they "season" into the senior position.<p>Suffice it to say, this is a major, if not the major, problem with commerce today. Companies like Amazon and Walmart are killing their competition for a number of reasons, but not having stupid incentive structures that end up looking to the first-time customer like a big middle finger is definitely not hurting them.