Growth Dynamics Get Down

Here we are. Month six of this odd coronavirus time. At this point I think it is safe to say this "new" normal has become the normal. 

Symptoms:

Jake was putting in about 60 hours a week plus some time on the weekends but was still worried that his sales and management production was not nearly as high as it could be. The family did not see him as much anymore and his "To Do" list was constantly growing. Despite all his hard work, the only thing he could conclude was that he needed to do a better job of "time management".

Symptoms:

Dan left his latest meeting with a prospective account knowing he had to make some changes. The Buyer was willing to talk about many things, but not what Dan wanted to sell, which was being provided by another firm. The upcoming election came up several times too, but Dan did his best to push past all the uncertainties surrounding that topic. It seemed no matter how hard he pushed his features, benefits or competitive advantages he was not able to move this buyer to consider a particular product because of a strong competitor and an unpredictable economy.

There is one constant in life- change. 

Symptoms:

Jennifer had just returned from her ten-year high school class reunion where it seemed that many of her classmates had some fancy "professional" job. The question "so what are you doing now?" had become almost too painful to answer when she told her former classmates that she was in "sales". No one seemed to respect her role in business development as an account manager, with some even going so far as to say, "I thought you wanted to become an English teacher, what happened?" The truth was Jennifer had tried teaching for a few years, but soon realized that she would never be happy spending the rest of her working days confined to a classroom. Now Jennifer had to get herself pumped up to start a new week, but the negative head trash from her peers had her wishing she could go back to bed.

For the last 36 months the booming economy delivered record growth and profits for many sales organizations. That growth also created a challenge that virtually every sales organization had no success in overcoming: a lack of qualified sales talent to capture the available opportunities. The constant refrain of “where can I get some more salespeople” was heard coast to coast and there seemed to be no reliable answer. As typically happens in that business environment, sales leadership quit asking for good salespeople and settled for any available body that could walk, chew gum, and hand out product literature. The recycling of poor to mediocre talent that could get overpaid for their production became acceptable as sales managers were afraid of reporting that all the territories were not being covered. The high tide floated all ships, even those that were rusted out or never really proved sea worthiness.

Symptoms:

With the workplace more turbulent than ever, it's important to make sure every hire and position is filled with a quality candidate.