Sales leadership practices that do more harm than good
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Discover what science reveals as some of the worst sales leadership practices today. How might some of these common sales development practices actually create sales problems that hurt the bottom line, prevent the improvement of sales people, and cause your best salespeople to leave? What could you be doing about it? Watch the on demand recording on the Sales Experts Channel here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/14877/240421
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Sales leadership practices that do more harm than good
- 1. Sales Leadership Practices That do more harm than good! @icarolemahoney #SalesXperts
- 2. About me Unbound Growth Founder www.unboundgrowth.com linkedin.com/in/carolemahoney @icarolemahoney #SalesXperts
- 3. Agenda Common harmful sales leadership practices What impact they have on front line sales Why & how it’s harmful & what to do about it How changing them will improve results @icarolemahoney #SalesXperts
- 4. Harmful Sales Practices ● Disappearing Quotas ● Mandatory Desk Duty ● One Size Fits Everything ● Discounting ● Reactive “coaching” ● Answer Machines @icarolemahoney #SalesXperts
- 6. #mindsetmatters Supportive Beliefs No Need Approval Emotional Control Supportive Buy Cycles Ease Discussing Money No problem with Rejection Source: Objective Management Group @icarolemahoney #SalesXperts
- 9. @icarolemahoney #SalesXperts One Size Fits Everything
- 11. @icarolemahoney #SalesXperts 1 Source: Sales Executive Council
- 13. Impact on Revenue @icarolemahoney #SalesXperts ● Increase average deal size by 34% ● Decrease in sales cycle by 50% ● Double overall sales ● 4 to 1 returns
- 14. Go ahead, ask me... Carole Mahoney e@carolemahoney.com linkedin.com/in/carolemahoney www.unboundgrowth.com @icarolemahoney #SalesXperts
Notas do Editor
- Hello and welcome to this Sales Experts BrightTalk Channel webinar on Sales Leadership Practices that do more harm than good. For those of you that are new to the Sales Experts Bright Talk Channel, you can continue this conversation on the LinkedIn group, by using the hashtag #salesXperts or simply tweeting to me at @icarolemahoney- I answer everything personally. I will also answer any questions at the end.
- TO learn more about me, check out my website or Linkedin profile. I really want to make this about your sales teams though. Here’s why. A sales manager asked to work with us recently to learn how to develop his salespeople and help them get the kinds of results that our clients have gotten. In his words, “I don’t want my team to become the collateral damage of my shortcomings.” It’s probably the best way I have heard someone articulate an other-focused leadership mindset. This leader’s willingness to own their own shortcomings and invest in themselves is already changing the status quo for him and his team (and his company). I don’t believe this sales manager is an outlier or anomaly. In my observations, interactions and conversations with sales leaders in other types of companies in other parts of the country and world, I hear variations of the same sentiments and others like: “I want to be a better manager and grow my people, but the more responsibility I take on, the less training, coaching, mentoring and support I seem to get. I just don’t know where to start and what to do next.” “How do I get my team to think for themselves and stop coming to me for every question that they could answer on their own?” “How do I help my sales people get out of their own way?” Which leads me to the question I have been asking myself and others. Are executive leaders creating their own sales problems? My hypothesis is yes, they do. I understand that this is not going to gain me a lot of fans, but for the sake of your sales teams who can’t say it to you- I am. I’m not saying that you are creating all of your own problems and that everything is your fault, but if I were about to shoot myself in the foot, I’d appreciate someone giving me the heads up. So here are a few of the most common problems I have seen.
- Harmful to who? Sales managers, sales people and that means- harmful to buyers in the short and long run.
- Sometimes we don’t know how things will play out, what the actual application of our plans and formulas are. Throughout this session, I will be referencing a previous session called Mindset Matters where I share the science that tells us more about why the practices I mention are harmful and a scientific way to change them. You can also read the articles I have published with the links in the attachments as well. Disclosure: if you are hoping for some magic formulas there, sorry-you won’t find them. But if you want to know how to apply proven behavioral science to sales, that you will find.
- As we talk about these harmful practices we will not only focus on the impact it has on salespeople, but also on buyers as a result. Why any of this matters after all…? when working wih frontlines we tackle these deeply rooted fundamentals- but if the leadership has created an environment that causes these things- either the person we coach and train will leave, become a PITA, or regress back to previous state and results. ie: leadership creating their own problems… ex: working within a company now whose salepeople and managers ALL have supportive buy cycle issues. They comparision shop, focus on price… guess what? that is how the company buys, from the CEO on down. The result? lots of discounting, delays, put offs, no decisions… There are 2 attachments to help go into why this matters to the conversation- Jane Gentry’s eBook on Relational intelligence & My eGuide Mindset Matters. BUt for today, I want to give you the highlights and the actions you can start taking right away to make immediate and drastic improvements in your sales culture and performance.
- This is the first because it’s the worst. One client had a 1.8 mil quota which if he met meant a bonus, and if he went over was a much bigger bonus. Just as he was about to hit 2.2 mil and his bigger bonus, his company changed his quota. The result? He left. The company lost it’s top performer. It wasn’t just the money- it was his trust that was broken. Oh, and that large deal he was on the middle of? Bye-bye… And all his coworkers who watched it happen? They’re now updating their resumes too… Still wondering why you have a retention problem? This is an extreme example, but it's not the only one we have seen happen. Company compensation issues can easily destroy trust and motivation. What to do about it: Easy. Stop it! Whatever justification you have to change a quota like this isn’t worth the impact to your sales culture.
- I get that you need the CRM data updated so that you can run your reports. But when you tell your sales teams to get this done or else, you are giving them a test. So for those who haven’t been updating their pipeline as it happens, it’s time to cram for the exam. And what happens? Most of what they put in the CRM are false hopes, dreams, wishes and fairy tales. Why? According to Linda Henkel, Professor of Psychology at Fairfield University; “Repeated attempts to remember as much information as possible involve many different cognitive processes, such as retrieving information that comes to mind readily, searching for additional information, and evaluating that information, any of which may involve imagination, embellishment, and reconstructive processes. The repetition that occurs across multiple retrieval efforts may serve to strengthen the confidence and vividness with which one both veridically and falsely recollects information.” What to do about it: Henkel found that:” repeatedly recalling items while considering their source was associated with benefits in terms of increased recall and fewer costs in terms of source errors.” First- use tech to automate as much data entry as possible. plenty of tools that will capture rep activity automaticalluy. HubSpot CRM is my go to. Second, set up daily opportunity roundtables, group coaching and 1-1 coaching. Short, real world. reps we work with have real and predictable pipelines because we are challenging their sources of recall.
- one size fits all everything- training, coaching, quotas. you figure out what applies to you. salespeople do the same to buyers. one size does fits all. “Let’s do a 1-3 day sales treat and train them up on value selling!” or “Let’s create an LMS system that covers every aspect of our sales process, product and they’ll have access to everything and anything at any time!” Here’s what your sales people are saying about that: “Waste of time. I got one or two nuggets that I might use a few times to see if it works.” or “I’m overwhelmed- I don’t know what to do when the buyer doesn’t do what the training said they would.” and “It’s too much information, what do I need to do right now to close a deal this week?” First, coaching and training as an event doesn’t work. According to the forgetting curve theory within 24 hours, they have forgotten an average of 70 percent of new information, and within a week, forgetting claims an average of 90 percent of it. Second, if you expect self-service training and coaching to work for reps, their cognitive bias make it nearly impossible to accurately self assess where their shortcomings are. Get an objective and scientific assessment of your sales teams and use that to identify the gaps in skills and behaviors that your buyers want from your sales people. Use that insight to create a customized training and coaching program for the team that addresses those gaps and measure it against sales results. Have the individual sales people develop their own personalized individual action plans and train managers on how to use those to continuously train and coach their team. what to do: assessments real world practice customized training
- discounting= reps with money issues I sometimes have a hard time believing that this used car sales tactic is alive and well in this technological age. But it is. Some might think that starting at a higher price and then stepping down will make it more attractive to buyers to take action now- but what it is really saying is that you are a liar. It also is a way for salespeople to avoid selling on value. What to do about it: Train and coach your team to ask layered questions to uncover a buyer’s reason to change the status quo and quantify the value. It’s not about price.
- check out Lauren Bailey’s session in this Sales Experts Channel on Good Sales Coaching Gone Bad. Many believe that coaching will help ‘reinforce’ training. Training and coaching as an event doesn’t work, a one hour a week meeting is really a training event and the forgetting curve theory applies. Telling reps what to do, over and over again isn’t coaching. Asking questions to get them to realize their own answers and help them develop a thinking process is. Coaching after the fact (ie: when the numbers and metrics come in) is more judgement than development. Telling reps to get their number up, make more calls, but not actually strategizing and practicing them isn’t helping them learn what to do for themselves. Managing processes and not behaviors is not coaching.
- this practice is evident when managers feel they need to give their reps all the answers, or rescue them/in sales calls. Many times this happens because pressure from/ above to get faster results. It takes too long to ask questions t get reps to think for selves. The other is manager are afriad to let reps fail, and learn because leadership doesn’t allow it. They feel they have to create plans for reps, tell them what to do, which puts an impossible burden on their calendars. what to do: reps create their own indiv action plans. have them drive the agendas for coaching calls. hire outside trainers and coaches to give teams perspective. Managers need someone they can turn to for answers- not just debriefs.
- Companies that use a scientific approach to sales force effectiveness have found that reps in the lower quartiles show dramatic improvement, with productivity jumps of 200%.” https://hbr.org/2006/09/the-new-science-of-sales-force-productivity