It is said that the number of people procrastinating has tripled since the 70s. One thing that is not a secret: Procrastination is a problem for sales teams. Procrastinating prospects lead to stalled sales that never close. Worse, procrastinating salespeople stall out on sales that ought to close. Worst, the problem is often difficult to identify clearly and even harder to remedy.
Many companies are going through their annual planning process. As the business unit head, you and your team have put in hundreds of hours building your marketing plans, analyzing trends, developing key tactics and building and revising slide decks.
Imagine what your organization would look like if every salesperson on the team consistently attained their sales goals. For many organizations, for which even a 60% goal attainment would be an improvement over current performance, it can feel like an impossible dream.
The dichotomy facing sales leaders today is how they reconcile the fact that most corporations provide less upfront training for their sales staff than in years past, yet attach increasing importance to staff development.
I sympathize with first-line sales managers, because I have always felt that their job is one of the hardest. They are accountable for a number, have to manage up and down within their own organization, and have to know their customers as well or better than they know themselves.
Just for the fun of it, here are my ABCs of sales effectiveness:
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