Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and lousy management. Here’s my personal top-ten list of the dumbest mistakes that sales managers make:
- Hiring people who don’t have the temperament to be sales reps.
- Keeping those people on staff long after it’s clear that they can’t cut it.
- Failing to coach reps that have basic talent but lack basic skills.
- Creating forecasts that reflect what top management wants to hear.
- Installing CRM that requires more than 5 minutes of data entry a day.
- Instituting incomprehensibly complex compensation plans.
- Hiring a motivational speaker and calling it “sales training.”
- Building sales processes that reflect obsolete and wishful thinking.
- Forcing sales reps to buy their own computers and cell phones.
- Insisting on nickel-and-dime expense reports for million dollar deals.
What have I missed?
