Having spent the past twenty-eight years working in small and mid-size businesses as a senior sales & marketing executive or as an independent sales operations consultant, the question I hear over and over again from business owners is … “Why aren’t my company’s sales growing as expected?”
Based on my experience, I’ve identified 12 primary reasons why this happens.
12. The company does not conduct an annual performance review with each member of the sales team
11. The company is overly reliant on the sales team to generate leads.
10. The company offers limited sales skills training and sales mentoring is non-existent
9. The sales compensation plan does not incent the desired behavior
8. The company does not have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in-place to record the sales team’s activity and results
7. The sales message does not differentiate the company from the competition
6. The sales team is not staffed properly
5. The company does not have a sales pipeline management and forecasting tool
4. The company does not schedule weekly sales meetings to gain market feedback and to guide, train and motivate the sales team
3. Sales performance metrics are not clearly defined
2. The company lacks a documented “sales process”
And last but not least …
1. The company does not have a detailed sales plan that is understood by everyone on the sales team
Are any of these reasons contributing to your lack of expected sales growth?
Comments (1)
Very candid review of why sales revenue is not growing in almost most companies that have not yet aligned to this review process