Sales Bosses Top 5 Dangers

What are the top dangers sales operations face today?  According to 2,663 such organisations polled recently, they are these 5:

1. Poorly defined sales process
2. Individual skill shortages
3. Unfocussed sales activity
4. Self-limiting belief prevails
5. Management not nurturing

I see all of the above inside the sales teams I support and pitch to.  Yet I’m surprised at this listing, as it’s nowhere near specific enough.  It’s like going to the quack and as you sit down, they say “Arh! You must have a pain!” and you gratefully take your leeches home thinking they’re a genius.  I’m sure the full report has deeper insight, but for now, consider this prose:

Issue Number 1: A poorly defined sales process that wasn’t being followed by frontline sales teams which dilutes sales revenues

What?  This is the original ‘selling’ text (I summarised for the above bullets).  These guys are in sales, right?  Why bother restricting yourself to the discipline of 4-words-max for a headline, when you plainly can use 17.  Leaving the presentation to one side, next there’s the message.  A “poorly defined sales process” is one thing to report, but no-one’s ever said that to me when pouring their heart out.  What they do say though, are things like “it’s really tough to get a second meeting”, “we get often pipped at the post” or “Purchasing Dept involvement is our death knell”.  And I feel the subject matter would both benefit from, and warrants, such further exploration.  For my tuppence worth, try some of these puppies from a straw-poll sample size of around twenty Heads of Sales that have confided these in me lately as their current major dangers:

• New product push flounders
• No/wildly inaccurate forecasting
• Too much discounting
• Vital intel not spread/shared
• Unaligned crm
• Not enough opportunities open
• Hunting-Farming imbalance