Characteristics of mediocre b2b sales organisations

• Disconnect between sales and marketing• ‘Management by results’

– Often standards of performance not bona fide sales activity plans

• Not planning and managing what will produce the result• Management spends too much time ‘flying a desk’• Too reliant on sales incentives (the classic cop-out)• ‘Hire the suit’ recruitment approach• Sell components of product not real business benefits• Default to commodity approach too easily• Sell at too narrow and too low levels of authority

– Typically lack credibility at senior business management level• Salespeople too easily diverted from selling

– “I’m your one point of contact”• Not enough owned by sales per se

– Too easy to point fingers at others • e.g. “I’m not getting the leads”