Five Common Sales Team afflictions

by John R. Treace

Problems in sales teams can be found to some degree in almost every organization. Smart managers are aware of this and work to avoid the potential reduction in morale and performance. Any one of these problems will not necessarily hurt sales efforts, but multiple conditions at once can be extremely harmful.

Affliction 1: Wasting time

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Forcing salespeople to perform non-sales tasks such as making accounts receivable collections, managing product recalls, or filling out reports unrelated to the sales process may be a waste of their time. Consider delegating these tasks to non-salespeople. If you divert five percent of a sales team’s time to collections, you effectively reduce the number of feet on the ground by the same amount. The reverse is true as well. It’s worthwhile to audit processes to see whether non-sales tasks can be re-assigned. Relieving the sales team of such tasks will result in increased sales.

Affliction 2: Poor sales meetings

The objective of any sales meeting should be to increase sales. Period. Every high-performing salesperson in a meeting thinks, “Is this meeting making me money, or is my time being wasted?” Powerful salespeople are self-motivated and intuitively know if their time is being wasted. If it is, management is hurting morale -- and sales. To ensure effective meetings, develop a strategic intent that includes clear success metrics. Define in specific terms what metrics are needed to determine whether goals are met. It takes a deep understanding of the business, the market, and the competition to do this. Powerful sales meetings produce sales and keep morale high.

Affliction 3: Poor strategy

Ineffective marketing or sales strategies will always hurt the sales team. This is especially true for teams selling commodity products or services. A player with small market share who enters a commodity market without a well-defined and well-implemented strategy can be assured of certain death. These types of companies usually say, “It’s a huge market, and we can grab some of it,” but it’s not that simple. The sales team will recognize ineffective strategy and will lose faith in the managers who developed it.

To compound the error, companies often try special promotions to save sagging sales on ill-conceived products. Some promotions can be effective, but managers should never call for a pointless charge of the light brigade. Sending the sales team to support a poor product or service is a severe tactical error. A successful sales effort hinges on good strategy. Companies that fail in this regard severely handicap their sales teams.

Affliction 4: Capping or reducing income

Powerful companies have managers who do not envy large sales force paychecks. Managers who resent highly paid salespeople often respond by reducing commissions, capping earnings, reducing territories, or removing products. Avoid these practices. They destroy morale. Powerful salespeople want to leverage today’s efforts into greater sales and income for tomorrow. If their earnings are limited, they will feel that ability has been taken away. High performers will soon look for employment elsewhere.


Affliction 5: Favoritism

We all have favorites in life, and that’s normal, but playing favorites on a sales team is destructive. Salespeople want to work for companies that keep the playing field level. If select salespeople are given extra incentives, benefits, or favors not available to others, management is creating a privileged class. Managers can’t build loyalty by strengthening a small political power base. Keeping the playing field level will pay big dividends.

Wasting time, poor sales meetings, poor strategy, capping income, and playing favorites are, with few exceptions, situations to be avoided. They are destructive to morale and lead to poor performance. Effective managers avoid these situations, and astute salespeople will bring these practices to the attention of management for correction.

John R. Treace is the founder of JR Treace & Associates, a sales management consulting business. He is the author of Nuts & Bolts of Sales Management: How to Build a High-Velocity Sales Organization. Website: www.treaceconsulting.com.

Do you have expert advice to share? E-mail Kristen.

A Culture of Trust Boosts Employee Performance

If employees don’t trust a company’s leaders, they won’t feel safe—and when they don’t feel safe, they spend all their creative energy covering their -- selves. They don’t take risks. And where there is no risk, there is less innovation and less “going the extra mile.”

John Hamm, author of Unusually Excellent, says “Without trust, people respond with distraction, fear, or paralysis.” This produces behaviors like sandbagging quotas, hedging on goals, and avoiding commitment.”

He says leaders become trustworthy by building a track record of honesty, fairness, and integrity. Cultivating trust isn’t just a moral issue; it’s a practical one. Most employees have been hurt or disappointed at some point in their careers by a leader. That’s why leaders are often in “negative trust territory” from the start.

Hamm offers these tips on building trust:

Model trustworthiness. This doesn’t mean you must be warm and personable if that’s not your personality. On the contrary, many trustworthy people can be harsh, tough, or socially awkward. But promises must be inviolate and decisions fair. People who can be trusted are more likely to gain the respect of others than the nicest guy in the room, says Hamm. “You can be authentically whoever you really are. As long as you are fair, as long as you do what you say consistently, you will still be trusted.”

Reveal vulnerability. Allow others to see authentic (not fabricated) weakness or emotion. This helps people relate to one another.

Be transparent. Tell the truth, match your actions with your words, and match those words with the truth we all see in the world: no spin, no justifications, no revisionist history.

Allow good failures. Hamm says punishing failure is one of the stupidest things organizations do, and it happens all the time. “Good failure” is a term used in Silicon Valley to describe a business or initiative that is well planned, well run, and well organized—yet for reasons beyond its control, fails. Good failures occur when you play well but lose. Punishing employees for good failures instills a fear of risk-taking, and stifles innovation.

Instead, says Hamm, strive for a “digital camera” culture. There is no expense associated with an imperfect digital photograph. Just hit delete, and it disappears. No wasted film. So people take many more digital photos than they would with film. If failure is “free,” we take chances, and can get that one amazing picture that we wouldn’t have if we were paying for all the mistakes.

Allow people to bring bad news. Shooting the messenger results in messengers who won’t bring the information you need. They’ll protect their -- selves. Instill confidence that leaders value facts, truth, and speed of delivery over judgments of good or bad.

Beware shortcuts. When victory or failure is in sight, there is a vulnerability to abandoning values in the name of expediency. That can set a precedent and lead to corner-cutting even in operations that aren’t at a critical stage. Plus, when employees see you betraying your values, they see you as less trustworthy.

Recognize whom to coach and whom to let go. You cannot “fix” a thief, a pathological liar, or a con artist. “There are three failure modes that I will decline to coach: integrity, commitment, and chronic selfishness—manipulating outcomes for individual gain,” says Hamm. These are character traits, not matters of knowledge.

But that doesn’t mean we can doubt or distrust someone because their performance disappoints, he adds. “Performance problems should be managed fairly and with little judgment of the person’s character, unless that is the root of the trouble.”

 “Everyone fails to achieve perfection,” Hamm says. So a leader’s goal is to make wrong choices rarely; admit them quickly, completely, and with humility; fix them quickly; and make full recompense when possible.

In a working environment of trust, Hamm says, teams stay focused, give their utmost effort, and do their best work.”

Do you have expert advice to share? E-mail Kristen.

Seeking great entrepreneurs

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Entrepreneur magazine looking for business owners to enter its Entrepreneur of 2011 contest sponsored by The UPS Store. The contest seeks small business owners who can share how their business makes a difference in their industries and communities and to their employees.

The criteria for the three award categories is as follows:

Entrepreneur of 2011: No more than 100 employees; gross sales revenue of at least $3 million in 2010

Emerging Entrepreneur of 2011: No more than 12 employees; at least $350,000 in gross sales revenue in 2010.

College Entrepreneur of 2011: Entrants must be either an undergraduate or graduate student between the ages of 18 and 25 during the time of submission. College students may pitch their business ideas for a shot at $5,000 in startup capital.

Last year's winners included Entrepreneur of 2010 Daniel Lubetzky of Kind Healthy Snacks, Emerging Entrepreneur of 2010 Derek Zobrist of Enovative Kontrol Systems, and College Entrepreneur of 2010 Allen Kim of Bebarang. Learn more about their businesses, read their stories and watch videos about their experiences at the magazine's website.

Judges include representatives from Entrepreneur's editorial department and Mail Boxes Etc. Inc., franchisor of The UPS Store. The panel will base its decision on several criteria, including business growth, effect on industry, community, employees, and customers.

All three winning entrepreneurs will receive two round-trip tickets within the continental U.S. and a profile in the January 2012 issue of Entrepreneur magazine. The three winners will also be honored at an awards luncheon and ceremony in January at Entrepreneur's fourth-annual Growth Conference. In addition, the winners will receive a gift certificate for $500 in free services at The UPS Store, a three-year subscription to Entrepreneur magazine and a selection of Entrepreneur Press books.

Entry criteria and the complete rules can be found on entrepreneur.com/e2011/rules, or for the college contest, entrepreneur.com/e2011college. The deadline is June 15.