More and more I meet business leaders who are puzzled with the under performance of their sales teams. Here in Europe our economies in general are doing well and still, quite some companies are struggling when it comes to sales growth with a healthy profit.

The question is: why is the sales performance of many companies not keeping up with the economy or the market they are in?

There are many answers to this.

Here are some main reasons:

The comfort zone. Humans are humans and humans have difficulty in changing habits. Whereas the world of selling and doing business has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, sales people still tend to sell in a very traditional way. It’s very comfortable to operate within your comfort zone. In the long run it will harm your business.
Existing resistance to change by sales leadership and the team. In a rapid changing world sales managers and leaders find it challenging to adapt to demands by their people. Where KPI’s have long been an instrument to monitor performance, managing behaviour, attitude, team spirit and other less tangible instruments have become more effective means to raise motivation and performance.
Lack of realisation that the market has become more complex to handle. A common remark one would hear from more senior sales people and leaders is: I have always done it this way. The problem is that the market place is evolving rapidly. Internet and the science behind sales is offering us better insights in how sales decisions are made. If you don’t keep up with these changes, they will overtake you by surprise.
Lack of drive for success. Accepting mediocrity is killing for sales people. Competition is often overwhelming. In a turbulent business world with many challenges, drive is one of the most important competencies in achieving success.
Management not knowing or understanding what’s going on in the sales team. An overload of excuses makes the sales horizon even more diffuse. This leads to lack of action to ramp up the sales performance and poor results.
Taking the wrong actions to try and solve sales performance results. I remember a situation where a company hired a sales consultant for a period of a year to find out what was wrong with the sales team. After a year and earning a hefty income the consultant could only report in vague conclusions what was wrong with the team and what the solutions would be. Aspects concerning sales methodology, process, pipeline analysis and management, drivers of success and more were not touched and even ignored.

Conclusion: A lot of the above mentioned reasons are difficult to measure in real life. Sometimes sales leaders or managers at C-level don’t even realise what’s going on in their sales teams until it’s too late. Often they choose an approach which is time consuming and very costly.

A better approach could be by trusting more in the science behind sales. More than just observations or vague assumptions, our innovative solutions can deliver sustainable and effective sales performance improvement within months. The investment will be much less than you think and will deliver you effective and sustainable revenue growth.

If you want to know more, please contact me here.

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