Managing the sales area is not easy, as many people who are dedicated to it have found and suddenly they have not been able to escape failure. This is produced by a lack of knowledge of the forces operating on the result, such as the size of the company, the alignment of resources on the objectives, the dynamics of market competition, the management of sales forces, the definition of goals, the degree of operational coordination and the degree of synchronization achieved with the same organization and customers.
There are all kinds of experiences and they contribute to further entangle the understanding of those who work in the area. There are people who, without any business study, manage to manage a highly complex sales area, without any problem; There are also those who for many years worked in a large company in the sales area and when they emigrate to a smaller company they discover that they do not know anything about sales management and fail consecutively, damaging their CV and self-esteem. There are others who succeed for a while and then add up to continued failures. Why does this happen?
The truth is that no one teaches sales. And sales management is confused with marketing, which is the most absent area in SMEs because it provides vision but not execution. Selling is not a problem of strategies, because strategy is a business problem. Selling is an execution problem, therefore a tactical problem. The execution of sales is so neglected in the companies, that many times it happens that in its execution it does not respect the strategy and nobody takes it for granted; The most curious thing is that when, as a Consultant, I examine the coherence between the strategy and the actual execution of the sale, it does not exist. In this way, success is certainly random, especially when you are successful in executing the sale as each member of the sales force comes up with.
When a company has sales problems, they don't need a strategist, they need a person who knows how to make the sales team work, connecting with the company they represent, with customers and, above all, sending salespeople where they can really compete and get results. However, those conditions that seem easy to fulfill, in practice are the great headache of the Commercial Managers and General Managers; This is because sales management requires a focus on results, a firm belief in going to compete in the market with the sales force available, periodically training salespeople, motivating them from the point of view of results, synchronizing effective demand. of the clients with the effective offer of the company, to establish lines of work that ensure the result;establish lines of control that improve decision-making and do not decimate the sales team itself.
Connecting with the result means being willing to execute, rather than looking for obstacles and difficulties not to execute. Many new managers in a company (newcomers) are only dedicated to criticizing the company and analyzing the reasons why it is failing and will fail, sensitizing itself to difficulties and threats, instead of focusing on opportunities. In the short term, they develop a language whose sentences begin with "you can't." With the resources that exist, the results have been obtained and if the sales management is adequate, with the resources that exist, better results will be obtained, then regroup, ask for more resources and keep moving forward. The resources to sustain and grow sales can only be obtained through sales growth.
All sales managers who have been with a company for a long time and have done things successfully in a while, have the experience and are the right raw material to grow the company, but they must admit that to achieve different results you have to do things different, then it's time to ask a good running sales consultancy for help. Executing sales consulting requires a high degree of specialization and knowledge of the nature of sales and of sales management and control models, without which it is not possible to help a sales manager change the course of his results, especially Because you will continue to fight with your people, wasting valuable market opportunities and doing the same thing: changing vendors or changing the same sales manager as if a new part could make a difference.
