How do you motivate a professional sales force?

Sales: Which are the common mistakes Sales Managers are making when managing their sales force?

• For example, sales managers might loose trust when they don't pay commissions in time. What else?

• Answer:

  There are any number of things that new or inexperienced sales managers can do to undermine or mismanage their reports. Here are four of the most common complaints from Senior Account Executives: Not recognizing performers publicly. Playing favorites with who's wins get highlighted to the rest of the company, and not basing rewards/recognition on merit can quickly lead to bad feelings. It is important that everyone see that they have a chance at recognition. Sales staff talk, and everyone already knows who is killing it. Publicly praising the biggest wins for each staff member can have a big impact on morale. Pushing to close all in-flight deals at the end-of the quarter. Customers don't buy on calendar quarters as a rule. However, publicly traded companies (and even private ones through habit) need to post growth numbers to keep shareholders happy. However, trying to pull-in deals to boost quarterly numbers creates a mad sprint which can tax the entire organization and often dilutes the realized value of an opportunity. There are many published ways to focus more on building and managing a solid pipeline (where deals close naturally) that actually lead to better overall quarterly revenues. Senior sales pros will do this on their own, as they know that they can't afford to burn any customer relationships. Re-arranging territories arbitrarily. Adding headcount to a territory only makes sense if the territory can support the additional headcount in some way. Rearranging territories without clear reason erodes trust, and does little to increase realized revenues. Using arbitrary territory splits such as dividing the alphabet for products which occupy a niche is inevitably going to leave someone with the short end of the stick. If that person is an experienced sales professional, they will often walk. Ignoring data, and shooting from the hip. A manager that refuses to look at the data available to them, and make strategy adjustments accordingly, is literally flying blind. In a booming market with talented sales staff this can be ignored for a time. However, the more seasoned professionals reporting to this manager will begin to doubt the efficacy of their leadership, and begin to either operate clandestinely or look elsewhere for employment. Churn of seasoned sales staff can be quite expensive to the overall organization. There are of course more, but these are the ones with the biggest impact that I have heard around the water cooler.