Why do Sales Organizations Fail to Consistently Sell or Create Sustainable Growth?

There are many reasons for failure however the barriers outlined below are the most common. While anyone point listed below can lead to failure it is generally a combination which causes sales failure.

1. Over-Reliance on the Business Owner: In many Small Businesses, the Owner has a huge influence over day-to-day operations. They not only manage and control most of the company’s activities but they also use their past connections and efforts to generate most, if not all of the company’s new business opportunities. Call us direct at 866-816-0991.

In many cases, most of the Company’s core business and profits have been developed by the Business Owner. The Business Owner, in his attempts to get to the next level now, hires salespeople. After the interviewing and training phases are completed, these accounts are then handed down to these sales reps, who at best, manage the accounts opposed to growing the accounts.

The Business itself is the Business Owners Business, and managers in many cases have very little decision-making capacity. We have seen that often despite interest expressed by Sales Managers, they have very little decision-making capacity to make a final decision or any decision at all for that matter with respect to implementing sales training.

2. Over-Reliance on a Few Clients: Failure to develop New Business: In order to reduce risk, in particular in a small sales organization, it is critical to understand the importance of understanding the difference between 100 clients generating $1000.00 each in profit, VS a few developing a total of $100,000 in profit. If your business is skewed towards the latter case you may want to immediately re-think your New Business Development plan.

Again, often the core business, developed by the Business Owner is handed off to new sales reps hired to grow the business. What often occurs, is that rather than creating an environment of real growth, where sales reps must “earn” established accounts through new business development efforts of their own, they are simply “given” existing accounts and do nothing more than managing these accounts resulting in no real growth. This results in the “Sales Plateau”.

Time, effort and capital is invested in hiring and developing a sales team that does nothing more than babysitting existing companies developed by a few at the top. A culture of New Business Development is not established, sales turnover begins financially impacting your bottom line and a vicious cycle is now in place. Business Owners; Identify Real Gaps in Sales and Sales Management Efficiency.

3. Failure to Implement or Adopt a Future Growth Plan: In dealing with sales organizations on a day to day basis, we are continuously surprised by a total lack of Growth Vision. There is a complete failure to implement a MAP; a Measurable Assistance Plan; or Future Growth Plan.

Delegation is key in Business, and having confidence in your salespeople is a critical component of success. However, turning over your financial future to a group of sales people without a consistent and agreed to sales course of action, is an approach that typically leads to disaster.

Analogy: You are planning a trip from Boston for San Francisco. You obviously want to take the most effective route which avoids delays and other potential problems. You want to reach your destination within the desired time frame in mind.

Without a carefully developed MAP, the result are as follows:

• Finding unforeseen delays and roadwork
• Extra time and effort, resulting in additional fuel expenses
• Ultimately you find yourself constantly pulling over to ask for directions!

Does this look like your current sales approach?

By having a realistic and achievable growth strategy in place, salespeople have a clear direction and you have in place a sales process that can be tracked in real time.