CEO Sales Tips and Sales Management Advice
The Top Five Growth Obstacles Business Owners Face Each Day
Every year sales organizations spend millions of dollars investigating new ways to grow sales. Business owners know that sales are the life blood of the company, or do they? Again, your own corporate culture (behavior-your way of thinking that translates into your habits and routines) may actually be telling you that the way to grow is through R&D, maintaining existing accounts or through attending networking events or conferences. If you can't produce new business, then there is no company, or at least no future for that company; it is that simple!
A past study of 2,663 sales organizations by Think Training, Nightingale Conant, and Trainique uncovered five areas that differentiate successful sales organizations from the rest.
Obstacle One – A wing-it mentality towards selling. 82% of all Business Owners said their company had a sales process that was poorly defined, wasn't being followed or no sales process at all. A sales process is analogous to a professional basketball team playbook. Without a consistent offense, a consistent defense and a consistent agreed to set of plays, what you have are great players who can't put the ball in the hole because they just don't know what their next move is. They become purely reactive to the opposing team, in this case the prospect! Is your sales team proactive and offensive in their business development approach, or have them become reactive and purely defensive in their approach? Call Peak Performance today at 1-866-816-0991 to discuss viable options.
Presidents and Business Owners, take our Complimentary CEO Diagnostic Now at to uncover the gaps in sales and sales management inefficiency that create anchors to your success and growth.
Obstacle Two – Lack of sales knowledge and lack of application. 42% of Business Owners and CEO's stated their sales people lacked the essential basic skills needed to produce at a rate consistent with real growth. Regardless of sales experience remember the following. You cannot put a man in a cave, leave him there for twenty years and have him walk out with a geology degree! Are your sales people really trained in the most effective and productive sales methods, strategies and techniques? Do they follow a consistent sales process? Call Peak Performance today at 1-866-816-0991 to discuss your options.
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Uncover the Top Sales & Growth Obstacles facing Business Owners
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Obstacle Three – Failing to adhere to a consistent and productive sales routine. Sales teams today lack performance standards that are conducive with growth. 90% of CEO's said their salespeople focused on low payoff activities, called on the wrong people or consistently called on the same low revenue customers. In other words, sales people confuse activity with productivity.
Obstacle Four – Allowing "Self Limiting Beliefs" to sabotage your efforts. 86% of Business Owners and CEO's said their salespeople had bad attitudes rooted in negative thinking or self limiting beliefs that seriously impede their sales efforts.
Obstacle Five – Ownership and Sales Management do not develop their people-Training, Un-Training and Targeted Coaching to remove specific sales obstacles and,self limiting beliefs are virtually non-existent. Business Owners and CEO's said that their Sales Managers were not spending enough time effectively coaching and developing their salespeople. The job of a sales manager is to coach their people just like in professional sports! Unfortunately, without a consistent offense, defense and agreed to set of plays even the most effective coaches begin to buy into the negative attitudes adopted by many in sales today.
For more on modifying sales routines, implementing sales criteria/process and attitudinal training, contact Peak Performance today at 1-866-816-0991. or can visit our CEO Growth Barrier Tool Kit Page to request our CEO Tool Kit Hoping your team will change is not an option.
Business Owners: Do you Invest 100% of your Time, Energy and Money without the Return on Investment?
Business Owners, Presidents and CEO’s of sales organizations spend much of their time second guessing what they could have or should have done differently that would have produced a better result.
For example sales people you hire… yet do not produce, positive attitudes that slowly convert into excuses and justifications for poor performance surface followed by an environment of complacency that creates anemic sales activities and turnover all create a plateau effect.
Quite often traditional sales people sit back after all of the hours of prospecting, pitching, presenting, proposal writing and chasing and go over in their own minds why the prospect, who seemed so interested did not buy. The reasons that typically come to the surface are at the very least, predictable.
- Your price is too high!
- We need to “Think about it”!
- We have decided to back burner this project for now!
- We have decided to stay with our current vendor!
- We went with your competition
Call Peak Performance today at 610-878-9400 to discuss your options. Unless you take action to change the environment and your company's sales approach, you are in effect accepting status quo! Have you identified areas of inefficiency in your company? If these concerns have been consistent and constant this is simply acceptance of the problem.
Resolve these issues today, Presidents and Business Owners, take our Complimentary CEO Sales Barrier Diagnostic to uncover the gaps in sales and sales management inefficiency that create anchors to your success and growth.
The question is, why are these reasons consistent, and why is it that we consistently determine these reasons only after it is far too late? Time spent reading emails, responding to voice mails, writing proposals with little or no real criteria, pitching to non-decision makers and not holding prospects accountable to commitments made is not time spent selling, it is time spent chasing! What percentage of the overall time on the job is actually spent eye to eye, belly to belly qualified selling with new prospects?
How much time conversely is spent chasing and or babysitting existing customers who translate into little more than a trickle of residual income? Why does this dilemma plague sales organizations? Understand that it is you, management that either develop the environment or allow it to take place. You lowest level of acceptance for poor performance and productivity is typically the highest level of performance you can expect. A better question is what is this costing you on a day to day, month to month basis?
For example if you reduced by half the amount of time either you or your sales people spend chasing procrastinators and doubled your actual time spent selling (most sales people are only in front of new prospects {outside the scope of your existing core client base} 5%-20% of the time or 2-8 appointments/hours per week) what would this translate into with regards to gross sales?
Does your sales team have a uniform system of selling? Does your company have a playbook in regards to sales? The first step is to identify which roadblocks are most common and constant in your business. Below is a link to our design program form. By completing this form below, you will take one step closer towards identifying the real root cause of the sales symptoms that negatively impact sales productivity. Visit Complimentary Sales Problem Diagnostic
If you really look at the amount of time invested into prospecting, engaging, presenting, writing proposals followed by chasing the prospect only to determine your sales people were on a fishing expedition and then compare that with your real ROI, you will realize the importance addressing this matter sooner rather than later. If you had a stock portfolio that was only performing at 50% of its potential would you keep dumping time and money into these under performing stocks? No! What you would do is you would access what you have, determine what is salvageable and how to address it and cut your losses with regards to what is really a dead issue. Hope is not a viable solution.
Is the great majority your time spent preparing the fish you caught for dinner, or is your time spent simply fishing or better yet or talking about the “one that got away? In order to step outside of the box, access what you have and to determine how much room for improvement or untapped/unrealized potential you may have in your existing sales people call Peak Performance Today at 866-816-0991
For more on modifying sales routines, implementing sales criteria/process and attitudinal training contact Peak Performance. Hoping your team will change is not an option. Request Free Growth Information Online Now
Confronting Sales Ineffectiveness: You invest in hiring reps, invest in advertising, invest more $
—But are you achieving more Sales Productivity?
Regardless of how many rounds of golf your sales people play with prospects, or how many sale meetings or attempts you make to motivate your team, sales are simply not good. Now what?
Many Business Owners adversely impact their margins by dipping into the corporate pocketbook to implement a new bonus plan. At best this may elevate performance temporarily, only to have sales people fall back into their regular non-productive routine.
Some CEO's fall prey to the complaints and bad attitudes of sales people who say they have no leads, or no one to call. Opposed to dealing with the actual problem, poor closing skills, they again adversely impact their margins by investing into more advertising and marketing campaigns. They simple want you to spend more money for them to get more leads, to have more opportunity to close LESS business!
To discover the CEO Solution Visit CEO Solutions for solutions that target your main growth obstacles.
Yesterday and Today
Sales in the late nineties were very predictable and just seemed to come to you. Sales today are anything but predictable and most sales people fail to go out and make it happen. Relying on a few rainmakers to attain sustainable growth these days just doesn’t work. These rainmakers merely allow you to remain above water. Relying on past lackluster hiring criteria in order to increase the number of feet on the street also does little more than compound your sales problem.
Today the most successful sales organizations are run by managers (Presidents, CEO’s, Business Owners or Sales Directors) who focus on elevating sales person performance. This is opposed to a “wing it” mentality of hiring more sales people who will ultimately acclimate and fall into the same level of lackluster performance as the rest of your sales team
For more CEO Assistance, Visit Complimentary CEO Growth Barrier Diagnostic.
Transform "The System" into "Your System"
What these leaders have in common is a more systematic approach. The key word here is system. Opposed to relying on the optimism inherent in most sales people or your gut instinct regarding a sales candidate, these successful leaders rely on a sales system and structure. The goal is not to rely on hope that new rainmakers will simply appear, again at a significant cost to the company, but to close the gap of inefficiency found in the less than productive sales person. Opposed to putting your financial future into the hands of your sales people, you now put your sales people into the hands of your system!
The first step towards confronting sales ineffectiveness is to determine the actual time your sales team spends selling. This does not include time spent chasing, dealing with existing customer issues or writing needless unqualified proposals. This is simply the end result of not having in place a uniform system of selling. Reorganization or reallocation of time will not be effective without a system to rely on and fall back on. Otherwise inevitably your sales people fall back into their counter-productive habits and routines.
For more on identifying existing sales obstacles and the implementation of a system please visit Complimentary Common Sales Problem Diagnostic.
Peak Performance Training and Development is a leader in Sales Force and Sales Management Performance enhancement. We rely on system and structure, opposed to canned cliches or techniques found in most sales books or seminar.
For more on how to eliminate the problems inherent in sales attend our upcoming complimentary CEO Seminar Implementing System and Structure: Moving Sales Managers and Sales People from Comfort Zones into Productive Zones.
If you're frustrated with your existing sales production don't miss this valuable conference! Seating is Limited Please Visit Complimentary CEO Sales Strategy Seminar
Why it is Crucial that the CEO, President or Business Owner Play an Integral role in Sales and Business Development?
Mistake Number One: Management Complacency that converts directly into Sales team Complacency.
Mistake Number Two: Management Fails to Prioritize Sales as the Primary Initiative
Although every manager or business owner desires to increase sales performance and productivity they fail to articulate this desire as a priority. Everything takes precedence over sales: marketing, accounting, product development, and so on. But what could be more important than identifying and removing the common obstacles to sales success and the growth of your business?
Does your sales team have a uniform system of selling? Does your company have a playbook in regards to sales? The first step is to identify which roadblocks are most common and constant in your business. Below is a link to our design program form. By completing this form below, you will take one step closer towards identifying the real root cause of the sales symptoms that negatively impact sales productivity. Visit CEO Complimentary Sales Problem Diagnostic
When speaking to upper level management and business owners, we see a common and dangerous denominator present in many: Because of their numerous time-consuming responsibilities they tend to repeatedly perform comfort zone activities. It is uncomfortable and risky to attempt to change the mind set and routines of their sales team. Driving people out of a non-productive comfort zone is stressful. They too often become paralyzed with the downside possibilities and fail to do what is most important for themselves and their company, to drive sales productivity! In other words they have begun the process of allowing their sales team to manage, management!
Stop doing more of what doesn't work. Stop running your business out of fear. Are you at the point of discomfort? Have you gotten to the point of realizing that remaining status quo is more dangerous and financially devastating than changing your sales course of action?
For more on modifying sales routines, implementing sales criteria/process and attitudinal training contact Peak Performance. Hoping your team will change is not an option. Request Growth Information Online Now
Mistake Number Three: Letting Past Success Block Future Performance
Another reason for sales team complacency is that Business Owners and Sales Managers often accept excuses from sales people who have been successful in the past. It is usually those previously successful sales people who are most resistant to change—despite the fact that their past success may have occurred some time ago and been more the result of positive market conditions rather than stellar sales ability. It is also the business owner or sales manager who has experienced significant growth in the past who often defers realizing that change is essential to repeat that past success.
To make top line growth a primary initiative management must first engage in a brutally frank discussion regarding potentially disturbing facts such as:
- Shrinking margins
- Client decay
- Limited success in developing new accounts
- Limited success in further penetrating existing accounts
- Poor lead conversion
Have you identified areas of inefficiency in your company? If these concerns have been consistent and constant this is simply acceptance of the problem. Resolve these issues today, Presidents and Business Owners, take our complimentary CEO Growth Barrier Diagnostic now to uncover the gaps in sales and sales management inefficiency that create anchors to your success and growth
Have you come to the Realization that Maintaining the Status Quo is more Financially Damaging than Change Itself?
The economy is changing, buyers are more skeptical and you are working harder and longer for the same or less revenue. You have concluded the necessity for or have been asked to lead a change initiative. The problem identified is that what you or your organization have been relying upon for business development is not working to the point where you can gain the traction necessary to get to the next level. The time, energy, effort and desire are present, however real change and results are not.
