You accepted the offer of Vice President of Sales and are now charged with rebuilding the sales team. They haven’t hit quota in months and the excuses vary from:
- Our product isn’t the best in the market
- Marketing isn’t generating enough leads
- Our price is too high
Your work is cut out for you in turning this sales Titanic around. Here are three critical steps as master of the ship.
#1: Assess your sales team. Do you need hunters but inherited a team of farmers? Do you need farmers because the hunters aren’t taking care of anything or anyone they close?
You can get rid of salespeople or restructure the sales department. Create a lead generation role for the hunters. They can throw the deal to the account executives who are charged with selling and closing. They turn it over to the account manager who services the heck out of the customer and upsells. Everyone is playing to their strength.
#2: Create a high performance culture. Stop yawning….culture makes you money. Establish a core value of managing results, not excuses. Let your team know there is always an excuse for not getting the job done. It just doesn’t happen at this company. Eliminate excuse makers and elevate goal makers.
#3: Train and coach. Your team has taken courses in reading, writing and arithmetic. They have never taken courses in listening skills, critical thinking or dealing with defensive people. And then you wonder why they aren’t closing more deals. Hmmm…..who is the problem? As the famous poet Maya Angelou stated, “When you know better, you do better.”
Take these critical steps and rebuild your team. You have a new building to design.