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Jan 26
2010
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Throughout
my long consulting career, I’ve never ceased to be amazed when I hear a company chief executive or head of Sales exclaim “I don’t understand why those sales people act the way they do. We tell them to do one thing and they do the opposite. They just don’t get it. Do I have to fire them all?!”, or something to this affect.
The real issue more than likely has less to do with the sales team than with the senior leadership. Entrepreneurs and senior executives are usually so consumed with wearing multiple hats and the complexities of keeping the ship afloat, that they often temporarily forget the basic blocking and tackling of sales force optimization. Nothing can be more damaging than a sales team not performing.
The reason that there often is a disconnect between what the sales team is doing and how they are perceived to be performing is that the expectations of the leadership is not aligned with the metrics driving the behavior of the sales team. The issue jumps off the page if you stand back and take a strategic view of the overall motivations and make-up of a sales person and the way your company is motivating them. Let’s examine this for a moment.
