One flaw in a sales manager that will get you fired in 2021 — research
It is mistakenly thought that if a sales manager fulfills the sales plan, they can be forgiven for some shortcomings like not submitting reports on time, being sassy or being rude to colleagues. However, times are changing so much that even in the most conservative companies sales managers are forced to renew the staff of salespeople, choosing those who already meet the requirements of the time, rather than having talent. However, there is a flaw for which a sales manager can safely be fired in 2021, a recent study showed.
A great deal of analytical work was done by the experts at Selvery, the company that develops the eponymous application for creating tailored content for consumers and collecting information about sales. The study of business problems was conducted throughout 2020, the experts interviewed experts from major European companies to find out what problems of the corporate sales system can really be called a “pain”.
In the end, the team’s main complaint with salespeople was the lack of feedback. Good or bad, kind or evil, young or old, active or passive — even when fulfilling the plan, without feedback the sales manager ceases to work for the team and turns from a member of it into a burden on the company. Interestingly, this became a problem only after the global lockdown.
Researchers note that in the past a salesperson was only required to sell. A sales manager could only formally comply with corporate requirements if he proved he was making money for the company. In 2020, the rules of the game changed dramatically. Face-to-face meetings with customers went to the third plan, exchanges between employees dropped to a historic low, the need to comply with uniform requirements and a personalized approach to the consumer — the one who pays the money — became paramount.
“In 2020, quarantine and the coronavirus pandemic sharply exposed problems common to all types and scales of entrepreneurial activity. These problems can be divided into external ones, like pressure from landlords, and internal ones,” says Andrew Pometun, founder and CEO of Selvery. “Our research showed that the main internal problem was the poor quality of communication between the product and sales”.
The sales manager is the first line of attack. He communicates directly with the customer and knows things about him that the back end does not. However, the salesman never works alone. Behind his back are the marketing, product analytics, design, and production departments that develop selling materials and the product itself. These are departments that do not work directly with customers.
As a result, in the hyper-competition caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the low quality of communication between product and sales leads to the fact that the materials created by “theorists” do not work, and the salesperson begins to “play creative,” violating all corporate standards and not passing on experience to other sales managers.
The authors of the study are sure that if in 2019 such a mistake would be easily forgiven if managers saw a closed deal, today without feedback the team does not need any talent, experienced salespeople, sales creatives, or any other productive silent ones. In this regard, the behavior of human resources has changed: the main requirement of HR-departments to sales managers is now tacitly the ability to communicate with other departments after the conducted — successful or, more importantly, failed — transaction.
The second most common was the problem of controlling the relevance of advertising, presentation and sales materials: corporate presentations, infographics, promotional documents, product library, sales scripts, and so on. As a rule, company representatives noted that without control sellers start using outdated data, misleading the customer and thus losing his loyalty. This is the reverse side of the first problem: all product or sales ideas born within the company do not reach the salespeople. Existing tools (e-mail, online libraries, file stores) do not cope with the new demands for responsiveness.
Product owners note that sales departments or, more often, official dealers in the regions use outdated data and materials “because they are used to it,” even if such materials are several years out of date.
Finally, the third problem is the lack of a personal approach to the consumer. Materials in companies are usually universal, different audiences require different approaches, but salespeople can’t remember the rules of “who to show what to”, they don’t have time to learn and understand the constantly changing data. Product marketing representatives don’t see how to use what they create to drive sales.
“If a few years ago such mistakes were forgiven at the expense of total sales, now every sale, literally every cent, matters. Due to the critical situation, businesses have felt the need for change and their readiness to use new digital tools, as our research has shown,” concludes Selvery founder Andrew Pometun.
The Selvery Targeted Sales Accelerator is an account-based sales system for creating and showing customized content to customers, with continuous data collection about the sales process. This research has been conducted by the Selvery team since 2020 in the form of face-to-face surveys of company representatives. As part of the study, experts were able to name several topical problems at once. The second stage of the study will be devoted to studying the problems of Western markets, as well as the Indian market.
