Are we confusing our sales teams?
“Get more immediate sales!”
“Why aren’t you visiting that prospect?”
“What have you done for me lately?”
“Why haven’t you followed up on that trade show lead?”
I think it is fair to say that sales people are the easiest people to both motivate and frustrate. We give them a task and point them in the direction we want them to go. We may offer an incentive or just the challenge, and let them go. They get all geared up, focused, and hit the road or phones ready to take on the world. Then, we go to our staff meetings, find out that the indicators just aren’t indicating, and we call an immediate sales meeting to set a new course. This simple action creates confusion and frustration to your sales team. As a manager, you know that there are company goals & objectives that must be met. As the manager of a department that is responsible for increasing the top line, you need to understand that marching orders handed to the sales team should be in line with the needs of the organization. This is the time of year we see a lot of these confusing messages. The 6-month results are in, and either your sales numbers aren’t there or something happened in operations that need to be made up in more sales. The easiest things to handle are when it’s your team that isn’t making the numbers. They are expecting a course change or new marching orders, or they have already tried to do it themselves. The hardest things to overcome are when it’s not the team’s fault. They easily get frustrated when they have invested months in working on what they believed were the targets of the company, only to find that time might have been wasted and they need to do something else. As sales managers, we need to better communicate upwards within our organizations. Does the management team understand the sales process and what needs to be done to meet goals and objectives? The management teams that we report to must have a good understanding of the process that our teams must go through. With that communication and understanding, they are less likely to have radical changes in the markets, products, targets, or just anything. A lot of sales people are put through training in organizations where they have to work in every department. From incoming inspection, through manufacturing, assembly, etc all the way through accounting and collections. With this understanding of the production and business process, they can better defend the organizations prices and/or policies. What “we” need to do with other professionals in the organization, is put them through a similar training to understand our business process. Your accounts receivable clerks need to understand what your customer service and sales teams are already going through to win and keep business. Your production supervisors need to understand where their products are used and how long of a decision making process is required to win business. With better understanding of the whole business and process, we can keep confusion to a minimum within our teams. If your team seems to be unfocused or confused, give us a call at Pinnacle Sales to see if we can help clarify the real situation. Maybe it’s your team, maybe it’s the organization. Let’s find out together!
Pinnacle Sales, LLC
418 Main Street, Suite 6
Belleville, MI 48111
(734) 516-0221
Pinnacle Sales offers Service Above the Rest