5 Big Sales Management Mistakes and How To Avoid Making Them

An upfront apology to my fellow Business Owners, Founders and Sales Leaders.

This article deals with some potentially confronting issues and practices related to how sales are managed in many businesses. Having said that, by no means do I intend to imply that the practices outlined below apply to all businesses everywhere. In fact, there are some exemplars out there where the sales management quality is very high.

I ask you, my dear reader, not to be offended by the generalisations below, but to take them as well-meaning advice with the aim to improve conditions, experiences and results for all parties concerned.

I thank you for your understanding.

Prologue

Sales is the lifeblood of your business.

Unless you’re running a government department, you are counting on sales revenue to pay the bills and give you the means to grow the business. That means that sales management is super critical to your success. It’s important to not just get it right, but to keep getting better at managing sales revenue continuously all the time.

This article describes 5 “practices” that have crept into sales management, and that are now holding your business back from getting the revenue it deserves.

I commend this article to all my fellow sales and business leaders and invite you to heed the advice I give at the end of each point.

We’ll start with something seemingly innocuous.

1. Sales Training

IF sales training is offered at all, it often is presented as a short course, after which the reps are expected to master the new learnings.

Hermann Ebbinghaus’ “Forgetting Curve”

The reality though is that 90% of new information is forgotten, if it is not reinforced within 7 days.

German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus postulated this back in the late 19th century.

What does that mean for your sales training?

It means that it is utterly useless, if it is not supported by ongoing practical on-the-job coaching.

In other words:
Your sales training budget is wasted, if you don’t provide coaching for your sales reps afterwards.

Mind you, some employers don't even provide training at all, but leave it up to the reps to keep themselves up to date.

My Advice:
When you provide sales training, also provide ongoing on-the-job sales coaching to make sure the training sticks and your reps' performance improves.

2. Promoting Sales Reps to Sales Leaders

This happens all the time. And why not? It seems like a good idea at the time:

You’re worried your highest performing reps may be tempted to move on to other pastures. So, how do you keep them in your business?

You promote them!

Your thought pattern is, that if they were great as a sales rep, they must be great as a sales leader.

After all, they can show all the other reps how to perform at a higher level, too. You think you’ll kill two birds with one stone:

Your highest performing rep stays in your business, AND your other reps’ performance improves. It’s win-win-win!

Unfortunately, this theoretical scenario does not often play out in reality.

All too often, the newly appointed sales leader fails to live up to your expectations, AND the performance of the other reps goes down, rather than up. What happened?

It’s a fact that many newly appointed sales leaders are former successful individual contributors, who were promoted far beyond their capability to the point of incompetence.

It's not their fault. The reality is that they simply have never been taught to be people leaders.

So now as a sales leader, they try to clone their reps into becoming versions of their former selves.

This approach usually fails, for which, in an act of career preservation, the sales leader ends up blaming the reps.

Disenchanted, the reps leave, leading to increased rep turnover that costs the business.

But it doesn’t have to be that way…

My Advice:

Help your sales leaders to become true people leaders, not just sales managers.
Don’t promote your reps without preparation. Instead, nurture your best sales reps and prepare them to become people leaders BEFORE you promote them into a sales leadership position. This way, they will be able to perform in the new role AND they will also be more likely to remain loyal to you and less inclined to leave.

3. Pressuring Reps To Perform

How familiar is this scenario?

At budget time, the executive team has set the annual sales targets and quota. It is handed down to the sales leader. There may be a bit of horse trading around the edges, but by and large the sales leader has little sway over the numbers they are given. They are just told to achieve them.

The sales leader doesn’t want to admit that the quota they are given is unachievable. They take a deep breath, cross their fingers firmly and accept the targets.

Now the pressure is on.

The sales leader then divvies up the overall sales budget to the individual reps, who also take a deep breath and hope they get lucky enough to achieve their given quota. But, as we saw in the previous point, the sales leader often has not been prepared for this scenario.

A caricature of a sales leader, “managing” their reps with a sales forecast in one hand and a blow torch in the other.

Because they have never been a people manager before, the only way they know to manage their rep’s performance is through pressure.

This is why on every Monday morning in businesses all over the world the sales leader conducts "forecast and pipeline “reviews”.

I have put reviews in parenthesis because they are rarely a two-way conversation. All too often, sales leaders manage their reps' performance holding the sales forecast in one hand and a blowtorch in the other, ready to apply to the rep’s belly (figuratively speaking, of course).

However, this pressure from above to hit, and even exceed, quota has a devastating cascade-down effect on your reps, as well as on your buyers.

However, this pressure from above to hit and even exceed quota has a devastating cascade-down effect, not just on your reps, but also on your buyers, and even on you.

What typically happens?

The pressure to achieve quota all-too-often makes reps pass the pressure on and makes them become pushy with their buyers. Buyer don’t like it.

The result is a lose-lose-lose situation:

• The buyers lose because they don’t like being manipulated into making a fast purchase. So pushy reps lose more deals, making them even more desperate to achieve sales results.

• The reps lose as they become frustrated that they can’t achieve their sales quota. They fear that they may lose their job. But it often is a job they hate anyway due to the constant bullying and harassment by the sales leader. So they jump ship and move to another employer, where the same thing may repeat itself. That’s a good reason why sales rep turnover is now at an all-time high. Not a good look for the profession.

• The business owners lose because the promised revenue does not materialise. At the same time their expense bills pile up, creating a pressure cooker situation for the business owner or leader.

My Advice:
With just a bit of forethought this scenario can easily be avoided.
Having prepared your sales leaders with people leadership skills before promoting them into a sales leader role (see the previous point above) means that your sales leaders are well-equipped to manage their reps' performance through active on-the-job coaching. Your reps will perform better AND stay with you longer, if your sales leader helps, supports and guides them to achieve their objectives. A co-operative, rather than combative, leader - rep relationship delivers superior results.
For evidence, see this study: “Examining the Impact of Servant Leadership on Sales Force Performance”

For practical advice on managing staff performance, read this article of mine: “The 4 Key Employee Behaviors You Can't Ignore and Need to Manage. Now.”

4. Not accepting help

Women will attest that many men refuse to ask strangers for directions, even when they are lost in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. Women often are more practical: “We are lost, so let’s ask someone and get out of here.” Makes sense, right?

I don’t know why, but many sales and business leaders don’t like asking for help, either.

Why is that?

Do they see it as a sign of weakness?
An admission of incompetence?
Do they think it undermines their authority or their status?
Is it just false pride?

I’m not sure, but it is not healthy.

No one is perfect.

Everyone can do with a bit of help to do even better.

Why, even top sports stars accept and receive help.

They employ fitness trainers, coaches, nutritionists, psychologists and strategists who help them to eek out every last last bit of extra performance. They don’t feel they are losing something by asking for help. Even though they constantly have another tournament or a new sporting season coming up, they embrace change and don’t mind trying new approaches.

My Advice:

If you have false pride, lose it. Seek help when you can do with some. Accept genuine advice when it is offered. Have an open mind and open ears. Be open to new ways and strategies. Get out every now and then and mingle with peers outside your business. Change your perspective.

5. Short-Termism

Here we are as sales and business leaders, monitoring forecasts, checking sales pipelines, racing from one sales quarter to the next, only to go from hero to zero at the start of the next sales quarter.

We don’t make time for anything new.

No, instead we persevere with the status quo, no matter what.

Then, when the “standard” selling methods start failing, we don’t look for change. Instead, we double down and just do more of the same things we know are no longer working.

Take lead gen as an example:

When response rates fall, the “solution” is to blindly send more emails, make more cold calls and pitch-slap more contacts on LinkedIn. We know that buyers don’t like it, yet we persevere with it, instead of trying a different approach. Simply because we worry that if we change something the results will go bad and we will be blamed. So it feels safer to just keep doing the same old thing.

It reminds me of the 7 most dangerous words in business:
“We have always done it this way.”

Now, what do you call it when so many sales and business leaders get stuck, doing the same old thing, yet expect a different result?

Remind me:

What was it again that Albert Einstein is said to have called this attitude...? 😀

Well, now it's over to you…

What will you take away from this article? What will you change? What new things will you try?

You can find some good advice at https://peterstrohkorb.com/download

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Or contact me for advice and guidance, if you’d like to know more, or if you’d like to use me as your sounding board.

Either way, I wish you all the best for your selling success.

Peter Strohkorb

Peter Strohkorb, Founder & Principal