10 Warning Signs

10 Warning signs that the bar is set too low for your sales team...

1. You consistently hear good reasons why your salespeople are not hitting their targets . . . and you agree with them.

2. You are OK with salespeople who are not growing professionally, as long as they are handling some reasonably good accounts for you.

3. Your turnover rate is good. Very few salespeople ever leave or get terminated.

4. Your turnover rate is high. And it's the good people who leave most often.

5. Your sales manager is spending considerably less than 85% of his/her time doing hands-on supervising, training and coaching with your salespeople.

6. No one is tracking the weekly behaviors of your salespeople and holding them accountable for acceptable levels of activity and performance.

7. If you were to rate your salespeople as Quitters, Campers or Climbers, most of them would fall into the category of Campers. . . Happy Campers.

8. Your pipeline is never as full as it looks.

9. New salespeople rarely live up to your expectations.

10. You accept the fact that your sales have been below target for the past 18 months because of the economy, your markets, or your competition.

Some observations that may or may not apply to your sales team:

The average salesperson is less than 20% effective on a day-to-day basis.

The average sales manager spends less than 20% of their time managing their salespeople.

The average sales mis-hire costs a company 14-24 times that person's annual salary.

Four out of five candidates for sales positions who make it to the interview stage of the hiring process either can't or won't sell when they are hired.

The average salesperson should be looking to double or triple their sales instead of hoping for incremental percentage increases.

Start to raise the bar . . .

1. Forget about historic territory performance. Attaching small incremental growth targets to territories that have historically under-performed is a trap. Set expectations on what should be, not on what has been.

2. Forget numbers for awhile. Sales numbers are history. They're lagging indicators. Develop and clearly define the behaviors that are required for your salespeople to meet their targets, then track them and hold your salespeople unconditionally accountable for doing them consistently.

3. Look at your salespeople as campers, climbers or quitters. Start now to upgrade everyone to the climber, A-Player category. If that's not possible, you may have to de-select and start over. And when you hire, do so with a no-compromise attitude. They must be A-Players.

4. If you have more than five or six salespeople, you need to commit to having someone in place whose job is to supervise, train, coach and mentor your salespeople at least 85% of the time. That's not a luxury. It's a necessity if you want to maximize your ROI on your sales team.

5. You must unconditionally commit to raising the bar for your sales organization. If you cannot see that bar at a higher level, no one else will either.

Do you need to raise the bar. Send us an e-mail to schedule a time to talk more, or click here to register for upcoming events.