Are your company sales dysfunctional? Do your other departments feel the sales department are a bunch of all-knowing back-slappers that lunch and play golf all day? If so, your company may be sales defective.
So often when I work with organizations that hire me because they have “sales issues”, once I dig a little deeper it is more then what is on the surface. Revenue growth is so often not a result of a particular sales person or persons. It is almost always other factors that are overlooked and often misunderstood as the true underlying issues to sales growth.
- The company doesn’t have a sales culture. If product development and engineering are the main focuses of your company, and the CEO or head of sales has a background in finance, product management, or development – not sales and marketing – the company as a whole may not be sales-focused. If so is that may be trickling down to your sales team?
- Sales Hiring is a wing and a prayer. Is hiring for the sales department proactive or reactive. If you are recruiting and hiring once a territory opens up as opposed to looking for the best people all of the time, which is a big issue.
- Your organization doesn’t celebrate sales successes as a whole. Sales success is a company-wide effort. When a success in sales in reached, all should be congratulated and celebrating.
- The sales group doesn’t know their numbers at all times. Ask your sales team and managers to define their numbers. Where are they for the month, year to date and they don’t know. This is a true sign of non-sales focus.
- There’s no sense of accountability. If reps are not meeting their numbers and the explanation is they are 80%, 75% or even 95%, which is ‘pretty close’, and acceptable, accountability is non-existent.
- You have never done a true assessment. Are you aware of what you should be looking for in your particular sales department and organization as a whole? Are you crystal clear about those factors when building a team? Do you hire off of a resume without taking in to account other factors that will create an environment of success?
You must assess things like Leadership, Forecasting, Goal Setting and Commitment. There are a total of 10 that are important to assess before creating a winning culture.
