Bad Sales Leaders – Top Down
Josh Phillips, Business Intermediary
Sales is a strategic process that affects target customers, how you offer actual product, and how you serve your company.
If an owner of a small business is not good at sales, then how can he identify a good or bad salesperson? If the sales person himself is bad, then the team he surrounds himself with will also falter, leaving a business owner wondering why sales are stagnant. If you are not growing, then you are going backwards.
The hardest part of growing a company and sales, undoubtedly is talent acquisition and retention. Luckily in Wisconsin, we have a large offering of people with strong skill sets that usually can be groomed into strong employees, as long as the owner offers the correct vision for the company’s growth.
From the article, “Ineffective Sales Leaders Can Cause Lasting Damage”:
The reasons that sales leaders fail fall into four categories:
- Direction. Poor understanding of the business, leading to errors in vision and strategy
- Talent. Inability to pick and keep the right people for the team
- Execution. Poor processes serve customers and manage people badly
- Culture. Inappropriate values damage the very core of the organization
Below is an article from Harvard Business Review, Ineffective Sales Leaders Can Cause Lasting Damage, that discusses ineffective sales leaders, and reasons for ineffectiveness distilled into 4 main categories. Please, have a read, because identifying bad sales managers early on weighs heavily on your future success before things get too bad with irreparable damage.