When I ask company leaders for the reasons why their sales people are wasting time when it comes to growing sales for their organizations, here are some of the responses that I get:
So, you set revised sales goals or put together sales contests with big financial incentives, or company paid trips if they hit certain short-term sales targets that you believe will motivate them and fix these issues. For a short period of time, they do get better, but soon your people slip back into the same behaviors and patterns of wasting time as before.
The reason for this is that these are just symptoms of the real problems, and your solutions aren’t getting to the root of the issues.
Your first goal should be to sit down with your sales people and figure out what their personal goals are and what motivates them to want to hit or exceed your company’s sales goals. From there, you need to help them understand how hitting these company goals will help them achieve their personal goals, and agree on how and when to keep them accountable to these goals. After that, you need to spend time with them to help them gain clarity on who they need to be going after for new business, and how to be most effective at getting there.