This may seem a tad insulting, but sometimes the salespeople we employ aren't salespeople by nature, yet we expect them to sell - and SELL FROM DAY ONE.
Selling is a process. A sale is not a single event or action taking place between two people. The connection, the meeting, the pitch, the proposal all form part of the sales process.
A lack of getting the sales required doesn't always happen because of the rep and salespeople we employ: sometimes it's the product, the type of product or price vs. the market we pitch to, as well as a lack of support. Even worse is when a salesperson can't reach a target because it is simply set ridiculously high, as we haven't researched the variables at play within the market we sell to.
Am I taking the side of sales people in general? Not quite, but what I am saying is that we neglect to research the variables at play within our market.
Threatening a salesperson with lower commission, fewer benefits, disciplinary action, etc, is simply not the only course of action we should consider when faced with a sudden drop in sales and/or declining sales or NO sales from day one. Firing and hiring sales reps is also not the best choice ... think downtime, training time, settling-in time... the whole forming, storming, norming, conforming scenario so often mentioned in group contexts in industrial psychology.
I remember working for a company, well-known in South Africa and internationally, where we had a sales staff turnover of at least two weeks - two weeks after I started there as a sales consultant/executive, none of the guys I started with sat in the offices next to me ... there were only new faces. And so the whole negative downward sales spiral starts again and again, until it's built up so much momentum that you can't stop it and end up closing the doors.
The reason for sales failure was actually quite simple: the products we sold were aimed at the closest relevant market, namely students in the area. The reasoning was: students or their parents must have money (otherwise, how could they afford to study), so they will want to be funky enough to have this product to their names, and mommy and daddy will pay - no problem.
It turned out that most of the sales reps were told to go because they simply couldn't get the sales in the market they were supposed to sell to. Well, either that or they just couldn't live off the little commission they got every week/month, so the best thing to do was to leave. Now, note: "otherwise, how could they afford to study?" It came about that this exact fact was the reason for us not generating the thumb-sucked sales targets. Mommy and Daddy couldn't pay for anything extra because they had to spend so much money on their kids' study fees, boarding, books, etc.
The company only looked at the fact that there were X number of students, with a supposed Y total in disposable income, and if they could only get 30% of the sales in this market, they would be set. Truth is, we got closer to 3% of the sales.
While working for another sales and turn-key marketing strat company, the reps and salespeople I managed came to my office on many occasions with complaints like: "...it really is a great product, but the channel we've sold it to is a non-performing channel..." My first course of action, obviously, was to recommend more in-store training courses, sales training for our reps, negotiating techniques, etc. Eventually, after spending money and time, or should I say, wasting money and time on these elements, I decided to do some "underground" research.
Guess what? Our reps and sales people were right. They sussed it out, and my research simply confirmed what they had said all along: "DUH, we can't sell to a market where there is no sell-through. The market our market sells to is just not the best target market for this product. Let's rather put the lower-spec and lower-price items there, generate more sell-through and sales and money, instead of wasting money by wasting shelf-life and other unnecessary wastage. Besides that, the in-store sales guys aren't motivated in the slightest to even mention our product to their customers because there is no sell-through, no pay-off, no satisfaction... so we end up sitting with a vicious cycle of non-sales and more returns from channel due to a lack of sales, product image damage and a general looming malaise about us and our products."
At some point you need to also assess whether you're selling a product, a relationship, a solution, yourself or your company. Either way, the sale itself is about more than simply getting the deal at the end of the day and pocketing the commission and revenue.
