The sales industry as a whole has always been a transitional career move/path environment. Today it’s more than ever. Managers, Owners, Presidents, and CEO’s are short fused with their sales teams. Sales members are looking at the proverbial “grass is greener” across all industries in response. A great time to hire and get that sales team dreamed of. Or so I thought.
The quickest way to demotivate a sales team member is to screw with their paycheck. Yet so many times a company will build a compensation plan and commission statement that leads to this. They are outdated, vague, confusing, assuming trust with numbers, and so on. Why?
No matter how great an organization is there are always customer issues. It could be a misunderstanding, personality conflict, a service level issue, or simply customer remorse. Many times all of these at once. As the original relationship builder, the sales professional needs to be able to work with customer issues or as I like to fondly call them, customer heat.
I would constantly hear the term “a teaching opportunity” any time someone made a mistake. At first this kind of bugged me to be honest. It seemed like a kinder, gentler way of saying they screwed up without saying it. As an upfront guy this tactful approach seemed… well… weak. But then as I thought about it more it actually made a lot of sense. These issues/problems should be times for teaching opportunities, not scolding’s, if you’re truly trying to build the best sales team possible.
