Why Is My Sales Team Failing?

The title of this blog, Why is My Sales Team Failing? makes me cringe a little. I don’t know exactly what’s going on with your sales team specifically, but I can tell you a plethora of things that might be going on. And if you want to call me up or have me meet your sales team, I can certainly pinpoint which issues are causing the most problems.

I also want to say that I’m not here to make anyone feel ashamed for having an underperforming sales team. Actually, getting a sales team to succeed is a miracle of good fortune and uncommon tenacity (and here at Tenato, we’re all about tenacity – our namesake). 

Having worked with sales teams across countless industries for three decades, and worked within sales teams myself, I think I’ve seen almost every way it can go wrong. Remember that as you read about these issues, it’s because some other company already suffered it, so you’re not alone.

You Have No Sales Process

It’s quite possible that your sales team failing is recent, i.e. if you had a good sales team in in the past, it could have been because of one specific salesperson. If that person is no longer in the company, all the intellectual property about how to best sell your products or services went along with them. 

So, the question is, why was that person so good? What language were they using? Did they have a certain way of showing value? This is precisely why, if you had documented these techniques into clear sales process, you would be able to replicate the best practices and the shared them with the newer salespeople. 

Poor Division of Target Opportunities

A sales team failing can also be the result of poor division of territories or target customer types.

In any business, there are opportunities that makes quick, immediate sales. These are usually small dollar sales. On the other end, there are some opportunities that take months or years to win. 

If you give all the small opportunities to one salesperson, they will be busy, but never have the sense of growth and achievement that comes with landing a huge account, i.e. ,“I’m staying busy, but I feel like my life is in the same rut.” Likewise, if you give only the big, longer-term opportunities to one salesperson, they can get discouraged by the long, excruciating waiting period required just to bring business in the door, i.e., comments like “I feel bad that I’m not earning my keep.”

For this reason, it’s much better to give salespeople a mix of the kinds of projects and client types to whom they can sell. This way, they have both short-term momentum and long-term hope for something bigger and better.

Motivation Crushed By Management

Management can also lead to a sales team failing.

For example, I once had a boss that used to compete with me, even though I was hired as his full-time salesperson. The reason was that as the business owner, he did some of the selling too and took quite a bit of pride in his own salesmanship abilities.

The problem was, when I’d bring in a new account, he’d say it was already his past client, or he knew the fellow from somewhere, and wouldn’t give me credit for the sale. What’s worse, when the shop got busy, he’d prioritize his jobs ahead of the ones I brought in, and I was always having to call my customers and buy more time.

Such behaviours add up. When a salesperson starts to feel mistreated by management for one reason or another, they no longer want to tell the world how great the company is. That means the wind literally goes out of their “sales”.  It is critical to treat a salesperson with fairness and dignity, if you expect them to tell the world great things to bring in customers.

But there are other ways management can de-motivate salespeople, even unintentionally.

For example, one client of ours had a major health issue, but didn’t want his staff to know what was going on. He stopped communicating with them, making them all feel isolated and worried. Sales slowed to a crawl, and many key people left the company.

In another case, a husband-and-wife ownership team used to fight audibly on the manufacturing floor.  The volume of these arguments peaked when sales staff brought in “too much” work. This affected not just the sales staff, but all the production staff too. Some of the best salespeople soon found work elsewhere.

The point is that there is a very good chance that if your sales team is not motivated, and especially if it is a recent development, it has something to do with a management problem. So maybe it isn’t really the sales team failing, it’s the management failing.

Inferior Products and Services

Inferior products and services don’t often cause motivation to lack in a sales team. That’s because most salespeople will usually choose to work for a company whose products or services excite or motivate them, and those basic characteristics don’t often change.

However, over longer time periods, companies age, which can lead to a sales team failing. Products or services that were once leading edge may fail to keep up with the times. Customers might complain about the quality. Competitors might recently have released better, newer variations. If this happens repeatedly, a salesperson can lose faith in the product or services, or feel that they are no longer best for what the customers need.

The best remedy for this is to create direct, close contact with the sales team and someone on the engineering or operational side of the business. That way, they can explain to the salespeople exactly why the products or services were designed as they were, to make sure they know every subtle feature and benefit.

It may seem obvious to work on product quality – and yes, that’s always part of the puzzle, because any salesperson loves knowing they’re working for the industry leader. But there might also be other kinds of buyers who would appreciate the offerings just as they are.

It might just be that a detailed knowledge exchange between sales and operations can help salespeople see the products in a better light. If not, market research may help find better new target markets to suit the existing products.

Customers Are Bullying Your Salespeople

Salespeople often believe they must keep the customer, and keep them happy, no matter what.

But once in a while, customers abuse that. How about a business owner who makes a salesperson listen to his religious beliefs for hours on end? Or a customer who chain-smokes in his tiny office through every meeting? Or a customer who demands the salesperson gives them pricing that they are not authorized to give?

In such cases, you as a manager need to know the details of the problem, and let your salespeople know you have their backs. There are certain kinds of customers you don’t want, and saying no sometimes is the best course of action. Maybe it’s not that you have a sales team failing at all.

If salespeople go home at the end of the day feeling exhausted and drained, it affects their ability to serve other customers and gain new ones. Or worse, they simply quit.

Compensation Problems

Having studied psychology years ago, I know that that money is not a motivator of good performance.  However, it has the power to de-motivate.

Some companies believe that flat salaries are the safest way to get salespeople working as a team, and this is true. Compensation that works on straight commission can create a lone-wolf mentality where leads and information are jealously guarded.

That said, I do think that some kind of performance-based compensation is better for salespeople. It helps them to think like entrepreneurs. When an entrepreneur works harder, they earn more money.  They need to get out of bed running so that they can cover their overhead too.

On the other hand, a salaried employee – who earns the same every month, sometimes for years, can fall into a rut of sameness instead of self-improvement. Why should they push harder, when their earnings are not affected? True they might get a raise, but if the parameters under which a raise is given are not laid out, then it feels like it might be an empty promise. In other words, there’s no clear, guaranteed incentive.

I believe that for salespeople to think about selling like the exciting game that it is, they need compensation growth to mirror sales growth. 

However it is done, whether by a structured bonus (reaching a tier of revenue gets you a raise of X), or a percent of sales (which could be partly on individual performance, partly on team performance), this will prevent them from feeling stuck in a rut, where the company benefits from their efforts, but they do not.

I would also recommend that you don’t make the flat (guaranteed) part of their salary too high – pay enough to get by, but give a reason to push for more. If you budget a base salary such that if you double or triple it based on performance (or more), then I think you’re in the right ballpark.

Lack of Competition

What would athletes be without competitions? While a few compete for personal-best reasons, there is no comparison to something like the Olympics, where they work themselves to the bone to be the very best.

If you have one salesperson, they can be motivated to beat your company’s best sales to that point.  You could also make them aware of a salesperson at a rival company, and encourage them to better their performance, if you know anything about them. 

But the best scenario is to have a sales team whose results are shared within the team.  I’m not saying you need to get them in a bloodbath kind of rivalry, but if you can, say weekly, have a team meeting and discuss who is opening which doors, and post monthly sales results, you’ll give everyone on that team a reason not to be at the bottom. 

I know a company who used to fire their worst salesperson every year. I don’t recommend that, as in theory if all is working well, the worst salesperson should always be the newest one, and you need the senior ones to help the newbies learn. The new ones give new ideas and make everyone better, and naturally their performance might not match up until they find their style and build up their clientele.

My point is that having a sales team (instead of an individual solo salesperson) of even two people – can help motivate each other to achieve better results. If you want to hire a salesperson, consider splitting that job into two, even if they are  part timers.

Difficult Pricing and Corporate Policies

Flagging motivation can also be related to bad pricing or corporate policies.

For example, I knew a salesperson for a company that sold a major brand to a network of dealers. This large brand had a policy to give large discounts for high volumes of purchases, which on the surface seems logical.

The problem was that in Canada, the large, eastern dealers were based in the highly-populated areas, so got much better pricing. In the west, small local dealers could never hope to get those prices. But the big dealers would set up branch offices in the west and undercut the local western dealers with aggressive retail prices.

The corporate brand’s policy made their western dealers so angry that many of them boycotted the products at all, opting for competing brand. Although the salesperson tried, he could not convince the brand policy makers to change the pricing issue. After hearing angry tirades from western dealers month after month, the company then blamed him for poor sales performance and let him go. That entire company was bankrupt just a few years later.

Marketing is Not Aligned

Sometimes, marketing is so far off base, it causes embarrassment for the sales team, and affects their motivation.

For example, I know a company that once hired a fancy marketing agency that put out an ad campaign. The ad campaign said their products or services were capable of doing something that they simply could not do. The salespeople knew this, and they were humiliated that they had to explain what happened, over and over, feeling completely undermined by the marketers.

This can also happen when there is no marketing support at all. For example, if your website is so embarrassing that the salespeople know that when customers go there, they will lose all credibility.

Salespeople expect marketing to reflect positively on them, and their employers. If your marketers are off track, it’s time to address it before you lose valuable salespeople.

It’s Actually an Operations Problem

If your sales are down, you must also check on the operations side. Are salespeople unable to make clear promises about order delivery because the operations team botches or is late on every order? Or, do you continually run out of inventory? Or, in a service business, is there a reputation issue going on, such as not addressing poor online reviews?

Now, while some salespeople are quick to point the blame elsewhere, others may not realize there’s a problem. Maybe your service standards haven’t changed, but there’s a competitor who is able to beat your prices or turnaround…while the salespeople have no idea why their results are poor.

In this case, competitive research can uncover the issues why your offerings, delivery dates, warranties or other operational aspects are not competitive. 

It’s a Crappy Job

I know some companies hire legions of telemarketers and door-to-door salespeople. These are not great jobs to start with, but there are things that make them worse.

For example, scripting. If you have at telemarketer aggressively scripted, they are put in the awkward position of having to talk right over top of the customer, cornering them from ever getting off the line.  Some of the script can be intimidating, scary and aggressive. Door-to-door sales companies often use similar tactics.

However, there are more positive ways to make these roles fun and engaging for salespeople.

For example, could you give them a more up-front, honest script that tells the price? Could you give them good questions to qualify the customer? Could you maybe give them a few jokes to use to relieve pressure? 

I actually think that even a “crappy” sales job can be made to be wonderful, because you’re constantly meeting new people. It goes back to building a better sales process, per my first reason your sales team may not be performing.

Other Personal and Insidious Reasons

This final category of reasons for poor sales team performance criss-crosses many areas. Blink and you might miss these things that could be going on in any company:

• Someone is being sexually harassed, bullied, or discriminated against. Read up on the rules here and take a very good look within your company.
• Someone is having an affair with an executive, causing favouritism anxiety within the team.
• Two of the salespeople are in a romantic relationship, which is either going well or going badly.
• One of the salespeople is jumping ship to a competitor, and starting to tell the rest of them to come along with them.
• Real or perceived nepotism. In a family-owned business, sometimes the non-family members feel like second-class class citizens. If a family member is running the ship, and especially if they aren’t good at it, the other employees (not just the salespeople) lose motivation because they know they will never rise to the top.

Research to Uncover Why Your Sales Team is Not Performing

The reason your sales team is not performing is not necessarily straightforward. The only way to really uncover it is with delicate, in-depth investigation and research (and yes, we can certainly assist you with this here at Tenato).

Knowing the right questions to ask, exactly how to ask them, and whom should be asked is a big part of the job, as is digging for the right information – whether online or through mystery shopping. 

Once problems are identified and resolved, you can move your sales team forward by building a clear sales process with all your best practices.

Please feel free to book a free phone consultation, and we’ll be happy to assist you, or learn more about our sales process development, training and other services.