Is Your CEO/Sales Manager Causing You to Fail?

Two things wrong with that title.

First, shouldn't your CEO and your sales manager want you to succeed and shouldn't they be helping?

Second, if you've been reading for a while, you know that one of the crucial elements for success is that a salesperson needs to stop making excuses for their shortcomings and stop trying to blame others (like their CEO or sales manager).

Let me share several recent anecdotes.

I was talking with a rep recently. They'd been in their current job for 11 months. They were the only rep left from their start group. All of the others that started were gone. This is not good. Think about all the wasted resources in hiring and onboarding those reps. Think about all the blown leads and pissed off should be customers. Plus, think about how that rep felt when they failed. What happened to their ego, confidence, etc.?

I was talking with a CEO recently. He figured that one weekly 30 minute meeting with his reps was enough. I've known sales managers that scheduled one 60 minute 1:1 with their reps every week because it was efficient use of their time. It might be efficient, but it's not effective. If they're debriefing a week old sales call, the rep won't remember what happened or they'll make stuff up. Salespeople need to be debriefed and coached just in time, which means daily or every other. Consequently, a sales manager could/should easily be spending half their time (or more) coaching their reps to make them stronger salespeople.

CEOs and managers need to realize that when they show their rep "how easy it is", it's a huge demoralizer to the rep. Salespeople need to fail, then go back and resurrect and save it themselves. Look around your company. The rep has a sales quota. The manager has a group sales quota and a recruiting quota. The CEO has to meet the expectations of the board, investors and other stake holders. A lot of people are being pulled in a lot of different directions. They don't have time to coach. So, they close the deal themselves. The heck with the salesperson.

Don't get ahead of me.

So, along comes the need for a third party sales trainer, consultant, coach or guru, but that's not the whole answer. Two points...

  1. If the boss pays, they're committed. If the salesperson pays, the salesperson is committed.
  2. Most sales reps have quotas, but their dreams are usually bigger than their quotas. If sales reps focused on their dreams, their employers would typically see higher production.

So, any smart coach is going to insist that their coachee have a dream and that they pay for their services and will not allow the employer to pay for coaching their salespeople. This is my program.

So, it's not intentional. They do want you to succeed. They may even know how. They just are busy doing other stuff and the typical training-type offering won't work.

So, ask yourself whether you want more and what more is.

Ask yourself whether you think 3-6 months with me would help get you there.

If no, no problem. If yes, ask your CEO what results you'd need to deliver to get reimbursed for my program.

Then, talk to me.

Click to schedule YOUR call with Rick!


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