Economic Barriers? A Valid Sales Excuse or Poor Sales Performance
How often do you find yourself questioning why your company is consistently not hitting its sales goals? For most Business Owners and Presidents, this is not because of lack of effort or time spent attempting to drive business.
Jack Welch, former CEO of GE said: "When you take on a leadership role, it's no longer about you, it's about them."
What Jack said was this; It doesn't matter how good you are or how effective you may be or have been in the past, what matters is how effective and productive you can make the individuals that you decide to hire and keep on your sales team.
Presidents and Business Owners: Click Here for our CEO Growth Barrier Diagnostic
One of the major factors that leads to poor sales performance is the Inability to Transfer Selling Skills to others. Sales Managers often move into a Sales Management role because of their ability to identify and win business. Selling skills, past selling success or even your current ability to personally drive business, is of no use or value to your organization if you cannot transfer these selling skills to your team and convert them into productivity.
One major factor that Business Owners must understand that leads to poor sales performance, is not understanding or identifying the differences in sales manager types. The Difference Between the Field Manager, the Corporate Manager & The Effective Manager In the many years of training CEO’s, Business Owners, Presidents and Sales Managers, we here at Peak Performance have determined that there are essentially three different types of Sales Managers:
Get your Free CEO Growth Barrier Information Kit | Click Here
Identify and Remove the Top Sales Obstacles that Impact Growth with CEO Sales Tools
CEO's and Business Owners Take Actionable Steps
The Field Manager, the Corporate Manager and the Effective Manager Field Managers, regardless of the situation stand by their team regardless of what did, or did not occur, or excuses given. They defend all actions and accept all reasons and excuses for poor performance all along refusing to adhere to or endorse corporate objectives. Business Owners and Presidents can as well fall into this dangerous category. The need to make friends … Over rides the need to drive business. The symptoms include: Failing to implement or enforce performance standards or sales goals Failing to terminate sales people who consistently fail to produce Failing to question obviously unqualified appointments or pipeline prospects that inevitably waste valuable time and negatively impact the bottom line. The Field Manager enjoys personal attention and values building friendships while building the business is secondary.
The Corporate Manager is interested only in moving up the corporate ladder, taking all of the credit and not allowing the sales team to have a real voice in the company. The corporate manager often hires only those who will not pose a threat to their own upward movement. They tend to talk out of both sides of their mouths. For example, they tend to praise the team when it shines a light on their own accomplishment of driving business. However they consistently keep their team down often through use of fear in order to keep them slightly off balance.
The Symptoms Include: A sales team that tends not to diplomatically challenge excuses and objections resulting in pipeline bloat. Creative thinking and independent thought come to a screeching halt. Sales meetings that resemble a heard of deer on a highway full of oncoming traffic. Turnover, turnover, turnover! The Corporate Manager builds a sales culture of distrust, resulting in low performance, low moral, low productivity and high turnover!
The Effective Manager is what you want, want to attain, or want to become. They achieve the difficult balance of motivating people yet hold them accountable to performance standards that achieve sustainable growth. They listen and utilize feedback from their sales teams. In addition they resolve real issues and differentiate between valid issues and excuses without prejudice. They are selfless and give credit where and when credit is due without over inflating actual results. The Results include: The Effective Manager build grows leaders.
The Effective Manager builds teams of people who stick and produce. They increases profit and shine the light on those who helped him accomplish it. Do you want to give your sales people the tools to realize untapped potential and increase your bottom line?