Growth Dynamics Get Down

Symptoms:

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. The sales managers created a program that paid bonus dollars to everyone’s comp plan if they sold the base products and three or more add-ons to at least 50% of their customers for this quarter. The payoffs added potentially 50% to the average commission for anyone that made the extra effort. Julie was not troubled by the amount of money on the table, but she was troubled by the way a few of the top producers were willing to take advantage of some of their customers to qualify for the extra pay. It seemed to Julie that these people were crossing the line, and to her that was greedy and perhaps unethical. Of course, she wanted the extra money, but Julie felt like life was good and that the incentive was nice, but not all that motivating.

Symptoms:

Ruben was excited about the call he just finished with the Facilities Manager at a school in his territory. The situation was a perfect fit for his company's new line of industrial faucets. Plus, the Facilities Manager told him the hardware needed to be installed ASAP or the school would face a fine from the local building inspector. Ruben couldn't help but feel this was one of those sales that all salespeople dream about, a prospect that had to buy right now and they had to buy a product Ruben could deliver. And when the timeline was ASAP, Ruben thought this was going to be a quick and painless sale. So, six weeks later, why was he still wondering when the PO was going to show up in his inbox?

Symptoms:

“The weather is changing; flowers and trees are popping out and I am exactly the same” thought Sam. Sam has been in sales for her entire career. She knows she does well enough as she has climbed the ranks through various companies, but she tends to plateau with medium accounts. Sam has yet to earn some of the major accounts and or territories that make salespeople’s careers. She has always been one to read all the top business books, listen to podcasts every chance she got, attends conferences, and even enrolled in a few training classes that promised to help her reach the next level, but nothing ever changed, despite putting all the things she learned into practice immediately. Sam felt ready to make some significant life changes on her own and earning more commissions would make it all possible. Now, she really wanted to see if it was her turn to be one of the big-time players.

 

Symptoms:

Forget desperate housewives. What really scares buyers are desperate salespeople. How many times have you run into a salesperson that is not in sales for the love of the game, or to be the best at what they do? They act as if they need a sale to pay their bookie by Friday! Buyers have come to loathe this fast talking, pushy pitchman stereotype.

Symptoms:

“Here we go again,” Jim thought as he walked into his last call of the day. He always scheduled this monthly call to be the last of his day as it left him annoyed, angry, and confused when he walked out the door. Jim just could not create the type of relationship with this business owner that he felt was key to his success with other clients. There were never issues with products, pricing, or communications from Jim, his agency, or the manufacturers, but these monthly update and prospecting meetings always ended up making Jim feel like a complete failure. Jim’s positive, enthusiastic, and lighthearted approach obviously missed the mark with this client, and Jim was sure the client disliked the meetings as much as he did.

Symptoms:

Donna hated feeling like this. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to do when she got back to the office after being out for a couple of days making calls on new prospects and checking up on some existing clients. Her to do list had a bunch of things scribbled on it, but Donna didn’t know which items were most important or when the people she had been talking to were expecting her to follow up.

Symptoms:

Abby prided herself on the level of customer service she delivered after the sale, and loved the loyalty her customers expressed to her. That loyalty also had a troubling side and it was beginning to show. She was having some problems in her territory and as customer base grew, so did the problems. Because of her history of being so responsive to their every need, many of Abby’s customers became dependent upon her and began asking her to do things not normally her responsibility. When she didn’t have time to deliver on these extra requests, Abby felt bad about failing her customers and they, in turn, began to express some dissatisfaction. Abby could see years of her good work in developing her territory slowly starting to unravel before her. Her best efforts were turning into the source of her biggest problems.

Symptoms:

Bill and Pat were returning from their monthly poker game and while riding back in the car they both agreed they had witnessed a situation that they could apply as a "lesson learned" to their business careers. Everything had started out very similar to an everyday business meeting or sales call with socializing and normal banter between participants, but about half way through the event something had gone bad.

A simple mistake had been made that resulted in some subtle and not so subtle accusations leading to lines being drawn about who was right and who was wrong. All of a sudden everyone was very uncomfortable with the tone in the room.

The "accused" had snapped back with a defense based on fairness and leniency (not results) that almost guaranteed a confrontation between the two sides. The emotions ranged from excuse making to embarrassment to anger and then to withdrawal and alienation as the aggressors piled on the wrong-doers. When the game broke up early, everyone knew it had been caused by too much bad behavior.

Symptoms:

James was feeling discouraged and wasn't sure how he could make it through another week like he had last week. A new prospect had made him wait over 30 minutes before he would see him, and then asked James to sell to him at his cost. Another client had told him he was backing out of a deal they had just made 2 days before, and that the reasons for the change were none of his business. This wasn't the first time that people had treated him this way and he was beginning to wonder just how much he had to grovel before he could do business with folks like this.