Sales People are Ineffective

We could start with their competency; do they know how to sell; can they build relationships; no self discipline; can they articulate the value of their product; bad time management; do they dress appropriately; all of these are rather personal and considering most sales people are employed to do this role, the majority of competencies are not the reason.

This articles focus is not if they are a good sales person, as the real reasons make a good sales person as ineffective as a bad one.

Everyone in a profession has a kit bag; it’s what makes them good at what they do, it’s the combination of their physical, emotive and skill attributes.

When a sales person is given the responsibility to convince their target audience to purchase their products, ownership doesn’t just reside with the sales person, there is a higher responsibility on the organisation to ensure that they have added value to the sales persons ‘Kit Bag’.

Imagine the following:

It’s always easy to blame a sales person for not accelerating the movement of leads to opportunities and then to committed orders, when they are put into the field of battle without the ammunition in their kit bag.

A solid Go-To-Market strategy for existing, new and intended products and services has to ensure that the individuals working in the field, face to face with the customer are able to excel in their role.

As a critical part of your GTM planning, the sales team need to be integral to the creation of their sales tools, that will enable them to make every engagement positive (assuming you have pointed them in the right direction). Ensure that you acknowledge and action the need to equip your sales teams (both direct and partner organisations) with all the relevant sales tools before the product is released to the market, else you will see low conversion rates and damage the image that prospects and customers align to your organisation.