How Much Crap Do You Put Up With From Your Sales Force?

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan
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Everyone Can Sell. Not Really. Top 10 Reasons Why Not - By Dave Kurlan

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

crap

As much as this title resonates for most of you, your salespeople will probably ask, "Are you kidding me? It should say, 'How much crap do we have to put up with from Management'?"

Everything you ask for, demand, and expect; everybody you direct, coach and hold accountable; every comment, suggestion, correction and criticism - Your salespeople simply don't receive your communications in the same spirit you intended. They think it's crap! You're either being unfair, hyper critical, too negative, or selfish. Perhaps you aren't handling your messages as effectively as you could. Perhaps you are. It's probably somewhere in the middle. There are three important considerations though:

Continue directing, demanding, expecting, coaching, commenting, suggesting, correcting, criticizing and holding your salespeople accountable. You may not have the best style and they may not like it, but the results will still be better than if you stopped or ignored them. Just continue to improve your timing and your style.
After you give your salespeople input, their reactions are whatyouconsider to be crap. So crap flows both ways.
When someone can't stand the crap anymore, there will be movement. They will leave, you will terminate them, or you will leave (if you don't own the company).

I have another rule about crap, although this one is more anecdotal than scientific. You will get the most crap (as a reaction to what they perceive as crap) from the salespeople at the opposite ends of the performance spectrum while the salespeople in the middle tend to perceive, and thus return, far less crap.

What are your experiences with sales force crap?

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Everyone Can Sell. Not Really. Top 10 Reasons Why Not - By Dave Kurlan

About the Author: Dave Kurlan

RSS for Dave's articles - Visit Dave's website
Dave Kurlan is a best-selling author, top-rated speaker and thought leader on sales development. He is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling (Dan Seidman), Stepping Stones (Deepak Chopra and Brian Tracey) and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2 (David Riklan).
Click here to visit Dave's website.

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