John's territory involves working with many prospects that ask for samples, demonstrations, proposals, references and all the usual items that buyers want from a vendor. Trying to appear accommodating and professional, John finds himself spending hours of time preparing, writing, setting up or sending all this information that he believes will help "convince" his prospect.
Symptoms:
With her best customer looking for something creative to solve his inventory issues, Ginny realized that none of her immediate ideas sounded likely to impress the customer.
Symptoms:
Fully dressed in his umpire gear, Gary was behind the plate calling the 3rd inning of his son's little league baseball game. The kid on the mound was so good he was picking apart the corners of the plate on almost every pitch. Although Gary was calling them the way he saw 'em, there were so many close calls that it didn't take long for the parents and the bleacher crowd to start riding him with the usual insults, heckles and personal attacks.
Andrea hated the pressure of selling. After three years in the business of selling payroll services Andrea thought she would be past this stage of professional development. Day after day, call after call it was still there; that pressure to convince someone that you are the perfect fit for their company when the market offered so many options. Andrea had to admit that at times she felt like she was lying to get a sale.
After having been in the same role for over 5 years, Ted was stuck. "What else can I talk about with these people that we haven't gone over all ready?" was the question Ted kept asking himself (with no answer) after he did a review of his clients. He knew he didn't want to be the pesky salesman that just made a meaningless follow up call, or who stopped in to drop off donuts and see what orders might be around to pick up, but he was also very aware that his manager expected him to keep growing the territory and expanding the accounts.
Julie felt conflicted as she listened to the other members of the sales team talk about how they were going to spend the big commissions everyone was earning this quarter.
Symptoms:
The sales quotas for the new year came down from the C-Suite. Hunter took one look at the email and felt sick to his stomach. This past year Hunter felt like he did as much as he could do without giving up all his personal time to his job. What more could he do to hit the 18% increase that was now expected by the bosses?
Symptoms
Gary is having one of those days where he is angry, but also having some self-doubts. One of his biggest accounts just informed him they are switching to another vendor. All of this comes as a great surprise and he knows these events will create a whirlwind of damage control, finger pointing and endless postmortem conversations. His first thought is they are just jerks, but something is nagging at him about how this could happen on his watch.
Symptoms:
As a newly hired sales manager for a medical equipment company, Devin inherited a large and under performing sales team. The team included the usual cast of characters: a diva who never took the blame for her results, a home run hitter who really struck out more than he connected, a Steady Eddie who was unspectacular but reliable, four or five people that seemed to confuse activity with productivity and a couple of truly high performers who annoyed everyone else with their consistency.
