Πέμπτη 30 Αυγούστου 2012

7 Signs There is a Cancer Growing in Your Sales Team

Is your sales team healthy?

Are they performing to the level you want them?

Is there a cancer growing within your team that you’re not aware of?

Do you have underlying issues within your team that is destroying productivity, creating turnover, and maybe even driving away existing clients?

Here are 7 signs that indicate you may have serious problems within your team:

1. Meetings start late because team members wander in when they want.  Is this a sign of a lack of discipline within the team or a sign that the team members don’t care?

2. Meetings are manager monologues because team members only speak when forced.  Are team members afraid to voice their opinions?  Are they disassociated and don’t care?  Do they feel that their views won’t be seriously considered?  If any of these are the root cause, you’ve got serious problems to deal with.

3. Your team experiences a significant decrease in sales in a stable or growing market.  A sudden and significant decline in sales in a stable or growing market demands immediate action—but not the shouting, the threats, and the demands for sales which are the actions most managers take.  Instead of ratcheting up the pressure, take a step back and dig for the root cause—which may very well be within management, not the team members.

4. Cliques and rivalries within the team become more intense.  Small cliques and rivalries occur naturally in every group.  Although we might wish these things didn’t happen, it’s natural for some people to be drawn together while others are drawn into close relationships with other people.  Some individuals prefer to go it alone.  It’s also common for some individuals or groups to develop good natured rivalries with each other.   But when serious issues arise within the team, the cliques become more isolated and the rivalries become more intense, the backstabbing and blaming tends to be more open, and a feeling of hostility pervades the office.

5. Conversations are short and business oriented only.  When your team members are “too busy” to speak with you other than when necessary but production isn’t increasing, you have issues to deal with.  Unless you are seeing real growth in production to accompany the too busy to talk claims, your team members are telling you they have such serious issues with you that they simply refuse to interact with you unless absolutely necessary.

6. Team members show little or no respect for company rules and regulations.  As with #1 above, you may simply have chosen not to instill discipline in your team (you’re just asking for big problems down the road but many managers believe they’re making the workplace “fun” and “creative” by running a lunatic asylum).  More likely, you have a team in rebellion and that no longer cares what management thinks.

7. You need an ice pick to chisel your way through the pack ice to get to your office.  Hard as it may be to believe, some managers don’t even recognize they have serious issues even when the ice in the office is so thick they can’t break through it no matter what.  If your office is coated in permafrost you have a dysfunctional sales team.

Problems don’t arise in the sales team from nowhere.  There is always a root cause—often more than a single cause.  From a dissatisfied, disruptive, corrosive salesperson to new restrictive office rules and regulations to changes in compensation to a dictatorial manager, there is always a catalyst.  But once the disease catches hold, time becomes its ally, making it increasingly more difficult to eradicate the longer it festers.

I’ve worked with sales leaders who have ignored the above signs.  Others have argued that these were nothing more than idiosyncrasies within their team.  In virtually every case they have eventually had to deal with a seriously dysfunctional sales team.

What about your team?  Are any of these signs beginning to appear?  If so, before you do anything, make a close examination searching for root causes.  But whatever you do, don’t ignore them as they become more destructive the longer and deeper they work their way into the heart of the sales team.


Paul McCord
http://salesandmanagementblog.com/

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