Dear Client:
I wanted to provide you with some thoughts regarding the sales organization. You retained me to investigate and uncover why the sales in your company have been going downhill for the last three years. What I discovered should not be a surprise to you. I suspect that you knew most, if not all of what I am going to be telling you. I think that you wanted an independent, third party to deliver the news in an impartial manner.
One of the first questions I asked the group was to tell me was the last time they had submitted a credit application for a new customer. One person had submitted an application within the last few months. For the rest, it had been many months. In one case, the sales person had never submitted an application.
This was the first warning sign. Here are the rest:
Not trained or educated
During my individual interviews, I discovered that in some cases, the person hired was never trained to do sales. It was assumed that they had a “personality” that was cute and bubbly, and they lived in the area where someone was needed, so they were hired for the job. Aside from some product training, this person had never been taught how to prospect, present, handle objections or ask for the order.
While they had spent a limited amount of time working with some of the more seasoned professionals, they had not been required to go through any sales training. Given the fact that they did not know what to do, and did not know how to do it, it is little wonder that the sales in these areas are less than one-half what they were a year ago.
These individuals never took it as their own responsibility to learn what they needed to know. This lack of initiative bothers me greatly. After all, how much time or money does it take to go to the library to check out a book on sales? And, did they ever discuss this with any of their peers in the sales organization?
Understanding the Internet Market
