3 Things That Will Tank Your Sales Team
Having had the opportunity to work with several teams over the last 20 years, I’ve seen a few things that are guaranteed to throw the revenue generation side of your business off track.
Here are the top 3 things that will tank your sales team if you don’t address them:
Lack of accountability and follow-up.
Accountability is so important it’s almost a cliché.
I’m constantly surprised by teams and organizations that don’t put in accountability systems, then follow through? OK, I’m not that surprised - accountability and follow-through, while conceptually easy, are very difficult to do well because it takes work.
There is no “set it and forget it” system for accountability that I’ve found.
It takes persistence and consistency - funny, two things we also look for in sales reps!
Unrealistic or Changing Expectations.
Both teams and individuals will crumple under the weight of unrealistic expectations or moving the goalposts on them.
Ever miss your target three quarters in a row? There may be something wrong with the target and not the team. This is often caused by a misalignment on the exec team. They create a budget for the year, very little feedback from the VP of sales, then they hand down a budget that is based on what they promised investors and ramp up the pressure - because, all things are solved by revenue, right?
How about changing the goal mid-year? A death blow to the soul of the team.
I believe success should be defined for a sales team in more than just dollars.
Not having a clearly defined sales process.
How can you forecast revenue or measure the ability of your sales team in any meaningful way if you don’t have a process to measure against?
Some sales leaders look at revenue for the past month or quarter and say, “that rep is succeeding,” when in reality, that rep might just be lucky and scored a few good accounts by being in the right place at the right time.
A clearly defined sales process helps you identify how reps are managing their lead gen, pipeline, and commitments, what their close ratio is, etc.. It also helps to find gaps where the rep might be getting stuck.
It’s the ultimate coaching tool.
It will also be an early warning system to help prevent the dreaded “pipeline collapse”.
Here are 4 more symptoms that indicate your team might be in trouble:
Managing everyone the same.
Not having a mechanism to manage your pipeline (read this as lack of basic tools to do your job - i.e., CRM etc…).
Lack of training.
An incentive program that doesn’t promote the activities and results you want out of your sales team.
Seem daunting? It’s not - there are solutions to all of these.
We’ll take a dive into the big three in the coming weeks.
-Joe