WorldCom's Sales Force in Commission Limbo

It isn't just caffeine deprivation that's driving some WorldCom (WCOM Quote) salespeople crazy.

With their desktop calendar pages already flipped to the third month of 2002, employees at different divisions of WorldCom -- the nation's second-largest long-distance carrier -- complain that they still don't know what their sales quotas and commission structures will be for this year.

The reports of revenue plan delays indicate that morale problems are more than saucer-deep at WorldCom, a company whose elimination of free coffee and other benefits was the subject of recent items in TheStreet.com's Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street column.

And although current and former salespeople don't all believe the commission uncertainty hurts productivity, others say that not knowing commission and revenue plans -- and therefore not knowing WorldCom's strategic priorities -- augurs poorly for the salespeople and the company. ...