SALES: This is a separate topic from putting together your perfect sales team, which I have pencilled in for a future post. This relates to mistakes I've seen made with a previous multinational brand and their sales team.
For the sake of argument, I believe it was 6 sales people that were responsible for approximately 3/4 million each. Each member was constantly belittled, told how badly they were doing in public and private. The working environment was so appalling that those that were good enough to move onto better things did, and thus results deteriorated even more without some of the team stars.
Why did this happen? A global brand set an ambitious forecast of 40% growth in a middle of a recession, secured a budget inline with these numbers and were shocked when these targets were not met. A demotivated sales team is not going to hit unrealistic targets on a regular basis, especially when an under pressure manager is blaming them instead of taking accountability for poor forecasting.
Working with and encouraging the team could have yielded some realistic extra growth enthusiasm and good will. Last time I checked, 2 people had left, 1 joined, needing to be retrained and 2 people were on long term sick leave.
Forget the product and marketing strategy first, you need to engage and work with your sales team. They're out there knocking on doors for you. If they aren't doing that, how are you going to make any money. Look after them. They are human turnover!
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