Of sins and sinners…. After 30 years and 4 recessions I can say with authority, a weakened economy displays the sins of the sales force like no other time. Let’s face it, when sales dip 15%, 20%, 30% or more, leaders begin looking at their sales teams. To succeed in this recent COVID economic downturn, you must have moved your team remote. You must have focused on stronger accountability. You must now listen to the message we’ve been preaching for 30 years.
If you were waiting to see what happens, you got left behind. If you were not nimble, you lost even more and are further behind. If you bought into the team’s excuses, you got bamboozled. Is it too late to fix the sales team? Maybe. Want to find out?
How do you know if you really need the kind of expertise we offer to grow faster?
- Your forecasting is discounted over 30% – When we ask Sales leaders, “Why are you discounting your forecasting?” Mostly we hear: “Because not everything closes.” “Ok, then why do your salespeople add the deals to the pipeline? They must believe it’s going to close, or they wouldn’t waste their time writing the proposal, right? So how can they be that wrong consistently? Is it the sales process they are not following or is it broken? Are they not qualifying properly? Is the qualification process congruent with the sales process? Do they have the capabilities to generate more new business”?
- Your sales managers are not turning in a Coaching report showing you what they are coaching the individual sales staff. In today’s remote sales environment it has never been easier to observe sales calls and provide real-time real-world coaching. Are the sales mangers falling into the trap of coaching on demand? Are they enabling the salespeople or empowering the salespeople? Are they coaching of price, value, or maybe questions and listening? How do you know if what they are doing is effective or not?
- You’ve told the team the same message and they don’t change. Could it be they have hidden or invisible weaknesses that you have yet to identify that are neutralizing their strengths?
- Your competition is winning more business than your team.
- You are tired of excuses and ready to do something about it!
- Your sales numbers are not growing by 30% year over year.