Paul DiModica

Often, I hear from VP's of Sales from all sizes of companies that finding good salespeople is very difficult. Like a professional athlete, when you find a great salesperson, you have a franchise player. They can pull your entire team upward to a higher level of performance.

Yet, their ability to perform on demand is dependant on other attributes beyond their own sales skills, business experiences, and control.

Like a professional athlete, a salesperson may have previous training, previous experience, or a business resume that indicates he should be a successful heavy hitter, yet he can still fail.

Is your firm making good salespeople fail?

This specific issue affects every sales manager, VP of Sales or CEO who is trying to build a replicable, scalable sales model to increase corporate product or service sales.

When seeking successful salespeople, they are interviewed, references are checked, psychological tests are given, and then the best salesperson available at the time is hired.

But 180 days later, managers start thinking about cutting their losses and letting the salesperson go because he (or she) has not been successful.

But is it the salesperson's fault?

Possibly, but the question that should be considered is -- could it be the management team's fault?

• Is the CEO's ego influencing how you sell?

• Is your compensation plan designed to prevent new business capture?

• Is your web site scaring away prospects?

• Are your corporate strategy, marketing and sales approaches operated as silos?

Selling successfully requires more than the individual business and emotional characteristics that the salesperson can produce. It also requires the company to be a participant in the salesperson's success.

It is a misperception by management to believe that an increase in corporate sales is the result of hiring top performing, high paid experienced salespeople -- like magic, POOF, you have instant sales success. It just doesn't work that way!

For experienced salespeople to sell successfully (hit quota or higher), management must participate in their success.

7 Reasons Good Salespeople Fail

1. The company has no documented sales process. Yes, you need to focus on specific sales techniques, but sales training is not sales performance. Having a written sales process will help you and your team build a replicable, scalable sales program that can be duplicated over multiple prospects buying cycles.

2. Management does not provide sales learning. Not sales training -- sales learning. 65% of companies say they actively train their sales team, but only 24% actually do it. Sales is a business profession which you must continually invest in to drive performance. Sales training is a one-time event; sales learning is an ongoing process. Invest in your team and you will increase their success.

3. Incorrect sales quota calculation prevents great salespeople from achieving success. Stop pressuring salespeople to hit their sales quota if your sales quota or target is based on assumptions rather than researched market demand combined with documented sales metrics. Making a sales quota in the back room to meet investor backing or personal objectives sets a salesperson (and company) up for failure.

4. The company does not provide inbound qualified marketing leads. Of course salespeople should cold call and network, but what about generating inbound leads for the sales team. Companies spend huge amounts of money on marketing that normally creates only a trickle of inbound qualified leads. Why spend money on marketing if it does not have ROI.

5. The company has an incorrect market gap analysis. Market potential must be documented, not made up in the back room. Great salespeople cannot sell red shoes to a prospect who wants blue shoes. Sell prospects what they want, not what you have in inventory or anticipate coming out of R&D.

6. The management team is negative. Great salespeople want to sell in an environment that motivates them to greater heights of success. If your firm does not provide a motivational work environment, it is wasting good employees.

7. The management team cannot succinctly define their business value to their sales team. When sales teams do not hit their targeted sales goals, often is because the management team cannot define their business value succinctly to their targeted prospects. In today's hyper- competitive marketplace, value is three dimensional and must be demonstrated.  Telling your prospect that you are good or that you are dedicated to their success is a commodity-based sales process. If management cannot define the value of their product or service, how can the sales team?

Revenue capture is a company responsibility . . . not just the sales team's responsibility!

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