Business people are learning a lot these days – one of which is that they’ve might have been in denial for a long time.
For sales organizations, denial can take on many forms.
A company may be in denial about the fact that they set up their sales manager to fail. You’ve seen this movie before. The best salesperson is promoted to sales leadership, and the company insists that the salesperson still can carry his/her own quota and STILL find the time to coach, train and grow the sales team.
That’s denial because the quota always wins.
CEO’s, make a decision. Either move your sales manager back into a full-time sales role, or change the sales structure and compensation so the sales manager can be a full-time sales leader.
Another area of denial: Companies don’t acknowledge that they put up with mediocre sales results and attitudes from their sales team. Prior to the pandemic, it was easy to rationalize this area of denial. The candidate pool on the street was limited. Unemployment was low.
In other situations, denial (and rationalization) survived because the economy was good, so products and services sold themselves.
Those days are over and so is the luxury of denial.
It’s time to move out of denial and examine which members of your sales team are demonstrating the skills -- and will -- to thrive during these difficult times. Who is demonstrating the willingness to work hard and make the necessary changes to win the future?
Denial is not a river in Egypt. Now is the time to check blind spots in your sales organizations and shine a light on areas that must improve to win the future.
The time is now; there’s no denying it.
Good Selling!
