Growth Dynamics Get Down

Good Monday morning - This is Sarah Waple, partner at Growth Dynamics, and I’m here with a special mid-year check in episode of Monday Morning Manager.

Symptoms:

One of the most common objections salespeople get is about price: "That's a bit more than we were thinking about paying." "Your prices are kind of high." "That just doesn't fit our budget" are typical comments.

Symptoms:

The last quarter’s sales numbers were posted online for the entire sales team to review. There was no hiding once the sales manager sent the email out to his entire team, and Darren hated seeing his name in the lowest 25%. What made him more confused was that he had been with the company for 14 years, yet three of the top five producers had less than half of his experience.

Symptoms:

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.

Symptoms:

Sally and Sanjay were comparing notes after a very busy week out selling. Sally was exhausted, but at the same time pretty satisfied that her week was highly productive and would produce some nice revenue for the company and herself. Sanjay, on the other hand, was exhausted and uncertain about what actually happened to him and what success he created.

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:

It was Thursday at 7 pm and Frieda was sitting on the sidelines of her daughter’s softball game with her head buried in her phone. This championship game had come out of nowhere as the team wasn’t very good but managed to keep winning. Frieda was thrilled for her daughter, but it couldn’t have come at a harder time for Frieda’s work schedule.

Symptoms:

Marcus found himself sitting in his car, in his driveway but still felt lost. For some reason, this feeling was a more regular occurrence for Marcus at the end each day.  It was as if the one or two things he was supposed to remember to accomplish would come to him if he just didn't turn off the engine and open his car door.

Symptoms:

Diane returned from the product demo certain that the features and benefits she shared with her prospect had wowed them. The buyer nodded when Diane asked if the product fit into the product categories they offered to their customer base, and everyone else that sat in on the meeting told her how much they liked what she had presented. She felt as good about this call as she had in a long time, but now six weeks later there was still no purchase order and the prospect had gone radio silent. How did their excitement turn into Diane's frustration?