Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Eight Reasons Why Salespeople Fail

Writen by Jonathan Farrington

The responsibility for ensuring that every member of the sales team is successful, lies entirely with management and below are the eight reasons why sales people fail.

In fact, I usually ask just three very straightforward questions, in order to identify why a salesperson is underachieving i.e.

• Are they visiting/talking to enough clients/prospects?

• Are they talking to the right people within those client/prospect organisations?

• Are they saying/doing the right things?

However this list, whilst not exhaustive, remains extremely accurate and as I said earlier, management has total control over each of these, including the last one!!

• Wrong or no selection process - The wrong person for the position

• Wrong or no training - Insufficiently developed

• Wrong or no planning - Expected to do all of their own planning

• Wrong or no supervision - Left without competent supervision

• Wrong or no motivation - Not properly motivated to meet objectives

• Wrong or no stimulation - Not stimulated by appropriate incentives

• Wrong or no evaluation - Not regularly appraised against a set of agreed objectives

• Wrong or no executive action - Not adequately supported by a competent manager

The moral right of the author, Jonathan Farrington, has been asserted. All rights reserved. This publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system or otherwise, unless this notification of copyright is retained.

Jonathan Farrington is a business coach, mentor, author and consultant, who has helped hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world achieve their full potential and consequently, optimum performance levels.

Prior to setting up his own consultancy, Jonathan earned his spurs succeeding in some of the most demanding and competitive market sectors. Challenging assignments took him from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and the USA, providing him with the opportunity to work with a number of the largest and most successful international corporations including: - IBM, Wang, Legal and General, Andersen Consulting, Litton Industries and The Bank of Tokyo.

In 1995, Jonathan formed jfa with the primary objective to deliver unique leadership and sales team development programmes to both the corporate and SME sectors. Since then, he has authored in excess of three hundred skills development programmes, designed a range of unique and innovative process tools and written extensively on organisational and sales team development. www.jonathanfarrington.com

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