What is the Gap?

What is the Gap?
There is often a stark contrast in the perception of sales effectiveness and sales productivity between the business owner and the sales manager or sales team. We call this contrast “The Gap”.
Case Study:
During a recent meeting with a Business Owner and his sales director, we gave each of them a blank piece of paper and asked them, independently of one another, to rate the overall effectiveness (ability to sell) of their sales team on a scale of 1-10. The President wrote down a 3, and the sales manager wrote down a 9! In other words, the business owner thought the sales team was doing very poorly while the sales manager thought it was functioning at almost optimal levels. With this sales manager’s mind set, what do you think that company’s potential for growth was? With this mind set do you think this sales manager has any incentive to raise the bar?
This gap in perception of sales effectiveness goes to the root cause of sales and sales management failure. Change will not occur until a business or individual comes to the conclusion that status quo is more financially detrimental than change itself. Although the company cited here had spent time and money on boot camps, one-day seminars and short-term motivational programs, the sales manager did not see any reason to change and as such made little effort to reinforce the training (change) provided, as such the business owner had wasted money training his sales team. The sales manager also had no “incentive” to change when he felt things were about as good as they could get. Remember you cannot change results until you change routines and you cannot change a routine until you first change the person’s mind.
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The First Step in overcoming Sales Ineffectiveness:
The Gap is present in a great number of sales organizations today. Change does not take place until the one with the most to gain and the most to lose (The Business Owner or President) concludes that things are not good enough. Some take back control by implementing and enforcing change. Others merely rely on hope. They hope that everything they have no control over may change, such as the economy or the sales superstar who has eluded them may come knocking! Stop relying on hope and make a decision to take back control over the engine of your organization: the sales department!
Please visit http://www.ceosalesolution.com/webinar.html for details on enhancing your sales performance results.