Ideas for Sales Consulting

I've been thinking a lot lately about various skills and services I could offer to companies as a consultant.  At heart, I'm very much a free spirit, and I think someday that will ideally translate into being a contractor or consultant, rather than being employed by a company.  I like the idea of having the freedom of having full control over my schedule and my destiny, and I also like the variety something like that could offer.


So, one of my thoughts piggy-backs a bit off my first two posts, which have to do with Organizational Management and dealing with Sales Managers and Sales Reps.  Throughout my sales career so far, I've seen a lot of instances where there is a breakdown of communication between Management and the Sales Reps.  Not that the Sales Reps aren't understanding the communication from a literal perspective (although sometimes this is the case as well), but more that they are misunderstanding the tone and intention behind the communication.  Or in a worst case scenario, the tone and communication intended simply isn't meant to provide positive motivation.


Having been a Manager once or twice in my career, I see how easily this can happen.  You provide instruction and direction to your team, in what you feel is a positive but firm way, but what is received is a more negative, unsupportive (or even frustrated) version of the words that were delivered.  I see it even more acutely from the perspective of a Sales Rep.  There have been so many times when support, confidence, and loyalty were what I needed most, and Management instead delivered a swift kick in the butt.  Or when Management continually delivered swift kicks in the butt as a means to motivate our team, when they did nothing more than demoralize and depress us. 

Of course, the last thing the Sales Reps are going to do is approach Management about their flawed, or ineffective management style.  And I'm not sure it would be useful for them to do so anyways.  Wouldn't it be nice for there to be an advocate available to analyze this situation and make some suggestions for improvement?

What do you think?  This Sales Consultant (advocate) would need to have some additional skills beyond your typical strategy-focused Consultant.  Like the ability to get people to talk about more personal issues with their work that they otherwise would be uncomfortable divulging to a stranger, or the ability to be able to explain sensitive issues to Management, or skills in mediation.  I think the idea would be to keep it low-conflict, never isolate any one person (Sales Rep or Management), but simply to communicate the overall tone of the top-to-bottom communications and how to improve them.  Would you hire someone to do this within your organization?