Common Mistakes in Sales Management
Each member of staff at Sales Team Focus Ltd has held a senior management and/or director level position in sales. In previous roles, each of us has made all the common mistakes there are to make in managing a sales team. These include:
- Hired a competitor’s expensive cast-off
- Recruited the best of a very bad bunch because we desperately needed to fill a vacant territory
- Hired ‘experienced’ salespeople who, it transpires, have sold virtually nothing other than themselves at interview
- Failed to recognise warning signs at interview
- Ignored warning signs we see & hear at interview
- Wasted hours interviewing ‘unsuitable’ candidates put forward by agencies
- Hungi on to a ‘no-hoper’ for longer than we should
- Wasted money on training that had no effect on performance whatsoever
- Hired a ‘farmer’ when we needed a ‘hunter’
- Installed commission plans that didn’t reward success appropriately
- Developed incentives that didn’t motivate
- Assumed all salespeople are motivated by success
- Sent people on training courses to re-motivate them
- Assumed that because salespeople knew how to sell, they would sell
- Used inappropriate measurement criteria
- Mistook activity for productivity
Yes, we’ve made them all (and more) and have the scars and T-shirts to prove it!
Through this hard-earned experience and the associated 20:20 hindsight, we share our knowledge and expertise with clients to help them avoid repeating our mistakes.
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