Sales Tracking: Ramifications of not holding Reps Accountable

As a Business Owner you are held accountable everyday for everything. rent, leases, advertising, salaries, whether sales come in or not! How quickly would a sales person fire you if your were consistently inaccurate with their pay? 

We find that one of the most difficult tasks for us as Sales Management Trainers is to actually get Business Owners to stop and step outside the box in order to identify and uncover the root cause of their sales problems. Symptoms are easily identified and are typically what most Business Owners and Sales Managers spend most of their time on. However, unless the root cause of the symptoms is discovered—what you see, is what you get. 

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The Traditional Approach to Sales Obstacles: Traditional Sales Training Organizations—those selling you technique based books, tapes, CDs and Seminar seats—focus solely on the symptoms. These symptoms include the failure to close, ineffectively prospecting, the inability to differentiate your company, failure to hold margins, and so on. For those of you who have bought the books, tapes or CDs, or have attended sales seminars, motivational programs and even boot camps, known as Impact Training in the past, you may agree with the following.

If you utilize hindsight and analyze the sales obstacles that existed in the past, the sales obstacles that you tried to overcome by purchasing those products or attending those events, and you add an ounce of honesty into this equation, you may agree with the following: Those sales obstacles that lead you to attend programs in the past, are exactly the same obstacles that have you frustrated in the here and now! Training towards symptoms simply does not work. The behaviors, mindsets and routines sales people establish over years of doing what they do will not change through reading a book or attending a one-day seminar. They read the book, listen to the CD or attend the seminar; they subsequently experience a temporary motivational boost, which in turn is followed by falling back into their old unproductive routines and mindsets. 

The Root Cause: Our belief is that unless someone in the sales performance arena actually gets around to digging down deep, in order to uncover the root cause of the symptoms, the very obstacles that impede your organization’s ability to get from where you are, to where you know you deserve to be, then sales seminars, books and tapes will continue to be a waste of your time and energy. For example, if a Doctor decided to operate on you without first determining the root cause of your symptoms, would you hire him or her? Once we actually assist the Business Owners in identifying the root cause of their sales problems, and even bigger problem rises to the surface. And this problem has a side effect. This side effect is the biggest problem in the world of sales. The Problem and the Side Effect The problem is that decision makers, when faced with the most uncomfortable decisions, don’t make decisions at all, instead they procrastinate.

First, let’s examine the word uncomfortable, or discomfort. We as human beings all work and live in a comfort zone. A comfort zone essentially is what we are comfortable doing. As such, we often neglect to do the things we are uncomfortable doing. Let’s look at this in context of the world of selling. Sales people also work and live in a comfort zone. They also neglect to perform those tasks that are uncomfortable for them. Some do not challenge objections, some do not call at the top, and some don’t call at all! Sales people discard vital components of sales success. Ok, so now you think you’ve got it right. You are telling yourself that you now are going to go back and hold your people accountable to higher levels of sales productivity, right. Wrong! Sales productivity is down because sales behavior is down! Now your job is to hold your sales people to sales behavior they are naturally uncomfortable doing, uncomfortable for them, uncomfortable for you, hope is at your front door and procrastination is slamming at your back door, you find yourself 18 months down the road no further along than when you identified the problem to begin with! Now, the Side Effect When you fail to hold sales people accountable to the behavior required to reach sales goals, sales people in turn fail to hold the prospect accountable! Let us first define prospect. In the profession of traditional selling, sales people spend their careers trying to get to the decision makers, right? Not exactly!

Although sales candidates’ resumes attempt to reflect that they are most effective at closing deals, obtaining appointments, getting to the decision makers, or holding margins, they are in fact actually most effective at what we refer to as the Effective Conversion. They effectively convert decision makers, into procrastinators! They fail to hold decision makers accountable to making a decision. Unfortunately, decision-makers when in the presence of sales people, defer making decisions. Sales people accept excuses, objections and reasons for this deferment because they are not held accountable. After all, you the decision maker are held accountable everyday to those you pay rent to, automobile leasing companies, telephone, marketing and advertising expense. Once in your career try the following. Tell your landlord that you had a bad month. You’ll have to make it up to them in the future. You’re good for it. You’ll try harder! See if they accept your excuse.

Call Peak Performance today at 866-816-0991 to discuss how to get back on track…and stay on track.