50% of sales managers don’t feel equipped to deliver in their roles this year
In this guest post Tony Prentice talks about how business leaders can ensure their sales teams have the strategy, information and training necessary to deliver the figures.
One of the most fascinating benefits of running a consulting business is the broad cross-section of industry professionals you get to meet and observe.
Over the past four years I have witnessed first-hand both the unique and the similar challenges and opportunities that face the modern sales professional.
In the surveys we constantly field among clients and non-clients, the most consistent yet startling insight is that only half of all frontline sales managers feel equipped to deliver in their roles within the next year.
Great article Tony, with practical insights. It’s no use having a great Sales strategy if the management can’t implement using best practice principles.
Could the uncertainty be because, (especially in the media space), we are being disrupted? If you are selling print, directories or even TV space; your market-share is being eaten.
A sales manager in an emerging software / tech related ‘media’ company would be flying high, with year on year growth – the only way is up.
Imagine being a Sales Manager at Sensis over the last decade. Imagine re-forecasting down, all the time. It would be miserable.
If 50% of sales managers feel confident that they can achieve their targets, then the targets are too low. Or they are lying. What percentage of publicly listed companies achieve their revenue targets in any given quarter or year? The ones that do so consistently are usually making up the numbers. Like Enron. Most of the companies I have met consistently underperform their sales targets. That’s not to say they are not growing. And many of them are. But often their sales are achieved through factors other than sales effort. And usually the sales targets are unrealistic. Who is going to set a single digit percentage sales target for their team?