My wife was away for two weeks. Anticipating an early return, I bought her a beautiful, lush begonia. The nursery attendant said, as soon as you get home, transplant this into a larger pot. At home, I found a large pot in the garage, complete with soil…albeit gray and rock hard. I managed to soften the soil with water and plant the begonia. Within 3 days, and well before my wife returned, it not only didn't produce any flowers, it died! I wondered why.
Many sales organizations invest money, time and energy in sales training and then greet their returning sales people, some actually improved, with the same organization and management they left. Upper management usually observes that the ensuing results are unchanged from pre-training...and wonders why.
The why is change comes from the top! if the upper management hasnt changed and the managers havnt changed then they should not expect there SP to change. As a SM for a fortune 150 company I find the most important thing I teach my sales force is to learn from there mistakes.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest problem I see with any type of sales force development is that change does not start at the top, they think it does but it doesnt and they start to eliminate good sales people because of the perception that they are not changing with the program. The first sign of low sales or lower margins they think this SP is not following the process, but in reality its probably the SM not supporting the process (assuming the SP has been successful in the past)
The focus needs to be upper management and the SM.
I look at a company that has slipping margins and lower sales dollars I am looking at the VP of sales and the SM first before I start to replace the SP.