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

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: How much crap do you put up with from your salespeople. How much do they put up with from you?

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

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

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:

1. 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.
2. After you give your salespeople input, their reactions are whatyouconsider to be crap. So crap flows both ways.
3. 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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Article Tags: management, sales, sales management, sales people



Related Forum Posts
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Re: Does birth order influence the desire to start a business? - I am the eldest in a polygamous family. In Africa where I come from, we are allowed to marry many wives. My mother is the first wife among six others. I am the first born and I am into business and all my other 22 siblings are business people too apart from the second born who is in the Police Force.
Re: Does birth order influence the desire to start a business? - [quote="ideasuniversity":2rddqi21]I am the eldest in a polygamous family. In Africa where I come from, we are allowed to marry many wives. My mother is the first wife among six others. I am the first born and I am into business and all my other 22 siblings are business people too apart from the second born who is in the Police Force.[/quote:2rddqi21] Of your siblings - how many are girls and how many boys? Are girls allowed to be businesspeople, or must they stay at home?
Contest - I really like Kai's suggestion on this one. And as you said, Evan, I feel a marketing/business competition would be much more beneficial than a SEO contest. SEO is extremely important, obviously, but it's something that can be outsourced to specialized SEO companies when starting a business. This isn't something extremely crucial that needs to be learned by an entrepreneur. However, writing a marketing/business plan is much more valuable in regards to learning. I'm sure that we can come up with a fair way to judge this type of competition. Unfortunately, only about, what, 5 people have respsonded to this thread, so it's rather difficult to get a feel for how everyone feels on this idea. Like Kai said, the business plan competition can be graded and evaluated just like it is in entrepreneurship colleges and classes; it is graded upon the viability of the idea, and more importantly, the depth and presentation of the actual plan. The judges can be made up by a select panel, or the community as a whole. Crap - I better get back to paying attention in class. Apparently the professor is calling on students to answer questions, and I'm not going to lie, I don't have a clue what is going on [except for the fact that the guy sitting besides me needs to brush his teeth]. Daggone entreneurship website! -Brandon


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