How to Ruin a Sales Force October 01, 2007 Steer clear of these common pitfalls
By David J. Cichelli
Competing objectives, creeping complexity and poorly conceived IT solutions can sap the morale and productivity of even the most energetic sellers. Read on for the most common offenses…and the best potential solutions.
Crummy Customer Coverage
Sales leadership needs to look no further than its own front yard to find the biggest offender of sales force productivity erosion. Poorly conceived sales coverage strategies comprise the number one source of sales force failure. Simply stated, many sales leaders fail to maintain correct alignment of the sales force with buyer populations, causing:
• Blended jobs. These are jobs where the salesperson is doing two or more dissimilar selling tasks. Sales specialization improves performance.
• Corrupted jobs. Decontaminate jobs that are degraded with non-selling tasks such as "fetch and get" after-the-sale customer service duties.
• Account ownership confusion. While necessary, the effective use of global account managers, national account managers and overlay specialists requires explicit account ownership protocols.
• Offering overload. Yes, product choice is beneficial, but asking a salesperson to sell too many dissimilar products usually overwhelms the majority of sellers.
Sickly Sales Programs
Sales departments need exceptional sales management programs to function correctly. Overcome the following poor practices:
• Complex incentive plans. Reduce complexity by reducing the number of measures to no more than three.
• Drive-by training. Your training efforts need to be contextual, compatible and part of a unified curriculum.
• Shape-shifting territories. Constant re-juggling of territories (no matter how beneficial) causes sellers to reduce their sense of customer commitment.
• Quasi-quotas. To sustain accountability, keep quota changes—such as quota relief and quota re-assignment—to a minimum.
• Mysterious sales crediting. Avoid special sales crediting adjustments and accommodations. Have explicit, unchanging rules about how sales credits are earned for quota performance and compensation purposes.
• Random recruitment practices. Maintain your hiring standards with a nationally managed recruitment model.
Lessons for Sales Leadership
Your role is to motivate your sales force. Be positive and inspirational with your sellers, but be absolutely ruthless with any practice that can undermine their success.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
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