I’ve been a part of many sales teams in my career, and over and over I’ve noticed five common afflictions that affect them, each of which reduces morale and sales performance. They can be found to some degree in most almost every organisation. Smart management teams are aware of these afflictions and work to avoid their potentially destructive impact. Any one occurrence of these problems will not necessary hurt the sales effort, but if allowed to progress to extremes, or if multiple conditions exist at once, they can be extremely harmful.
Afflictions affecting sales teams
Affliction 1: Wasting sales representatives’ time
One of the prime afflictions of sales teams is forcing them to spend time on non-sales tasks, for example making accounts receivable collections, managing product recalls, or filling out reports that do not directly relate to the sales process. Non-sales management often requests that reps perform these tasks, but great care should be taken before delegating them to valuable salespeople. If you, for instance, divert five per cent of a sales team’s time to managing customer collections, you effectively reduce the number of feet on the ground by the same amount—and the reverse is true as well. Sometimes it’s necessary to assign non-sales tasks to salespeople, but before this is done it’s worthwhile to audit a company’s sales process to determine whether they could be assigned elsewhere. Finding as many ways as possible to remove unnecessary tasks from the sales team’s shoulders will result in sales increases that will more than pay for the adjustments in duties.
Affliction 2: Poor sales meetings
Another affliction of sales teams is poor or boring sales meetings. The objective of any sales meeting should be to increase sales—period. Every high-performing salesperson who attends a meeting will be thinking, “Is this meeting making me money, or is my time being wasted?” Powerful salespeople are self-motivated, and they intuitively know if their time is being wasted. If it is, management is hurting sales and morale. Wasteful or unnecessary meetings also send a clear message that management doesn’t know what needs to be accomplished to increase sales—and no good salesperson will have confidence in that type of leadership. The simple way to ensure effective sales meetings is to develop a statement of strategic intent that includes clear success metrics. This statement will define in specific terms what needs to be accomplished and the metrics needed to determine whether the goals set in the meeting were accomplished. It takes a deep understanding of the business, the market, and the competition to write an effective statement of strategic intent, and managers who can’t write them need a better understanding of the business. The bottom line is that powerful sales meetings produce sales and keep morale high.
Affliction 3: Poor strategy
Ineffective marketing or sales strategies will always negatively impact the sales team, and this is especially true for teams selling commodity products or services. A player with small market share who enters a commodity market without a well-defined and well-implemented strategy can be assured of certain death. These types of companies usually say, “It’s a huge market, and we can grab some of it,” but it’s not that simple. The sales team will recognise ineffective strategy and will lose faith in the managers who developed it. If the players on a sports team lose faith in the coaching, the path to winning will be difficult, if not impossible; the same is true with sales teams. Don’t let lackluster or non-existent strategy cause this lack of faith.
To compound the error, companies often try special promotions to save sagging sales on products that are ill-conceived or supported by poor strategy. Special promotions can be very effective, but managers should never call for a pointless charge of the light brigade. Sending the sales team on a promotion in support of a poor product or service is a severe tactical error. A successful sales effort hinges on good strategy, and companies that fail in this regard severely handicap their sales teams.
Affliction 4: Capping or reducing income
Powerful companies have managers who do not get envious when large pay packages go to the sales force. Managers who are resentful of this often respond to rising sales income by reducing commissions, capping earnings, reducing territories, or removing products. These are all practices to be avoided, as they destroy morale, which hurts sales. When it is absolutely necessary to cap or reduce reps’ earnings, it must be done carefully. If it’s done carelessly, management will send the message that future earnings for the sales team have been limited. Powerful salespeople want to leverage today’s efforts into greater sales and income for tomorrow. If their commissions are reduced, earnings capped, or territory removed, they will feel like that ability has been taken away, and the high performers will quickly look for employment elsewhere.
Affliction 5: Favouritism
We all have favourites in life and that’s normal, but playing favourites with individuals on a sales team is very destructive. Salespeople want to work for companies that keep the playing field level for all. If select salespeople are given extra incentives, special attention, benefits, or favours not afforded others, management is sending a clear message that there is a privileged class within the team. This is one of the best ways to lessen team spirit, as reps will spend their time trying to move into that special class and not trying to close sales. Managers can’t buy the loyalty of a team by strengthening a small political power base within a company. Playing favourites within a sales team causes problems for all team members (even the favoured ones), but keeping the playing field level will pay big dividends.
Wasting time, poor sales meetings, poor strategy, capping income, and playing favorites are, with few exceptions, situations to be avoided. They are destructive to morale and they lead to poor performance. Effective managers will be careful to avoid these situations, and astute salespeople will bring these practices to the attention of management for correction.
Morale v execution
Morale – the esprit de corps or ‘spirit of the body’ – is the capacity of a group of people to hold a common spirit of loyalty and comradeship. We think of morale as being deep-seated in the psych of the individual or group. Execution, on the other hand, is the process of reaching an objective as the result of performance. A team's ability to execute is more of a surface measurement that's easily evaluated by an outside observer.
Cornerstones of powerful sales organisations
Morale and execution are the cornerstones of powerful sales organisations. Most of them recognise the importance of a sales team's ability to execute, since that is measured by numbers. However, some underrate the importance of morale, which is difficult to measure and is often confused with enthusiasm or situational motivation generated from, for example, a spirited sales meeting. Situational motivation is generally short-lived, but morale is ingrained and tends to have a lasting quality, unless conditions degrade it.
I once asked an applicant for a sales manager position what was more important: a sales team's morale or its ability to execute. His answer was execution-period! He wasn't hired in part due to the fact that I was part of a new management team charged with implementing a business turnaround with a very demoralised sales force. I needed a sales manager who intuitively knew the importance of high morale.
While morale is important, we can't discount the importance of a sales teams' ability to execute. Good teams should be able to execute as long as they have the proper skill sets, sales tools, and business environment. But poor morale is a deal-killer wherever it exists. A sales team with outstanding execution ability but with poor morale will function below its normal standards of performance. And the reverse is true as well: a team with average to low execution skills but with outstanding morale will produce sales results consistently above average for their skill level.
Performance against the odds
When times get tough-and sooner or later they will for any company – a sales team with high morale will continue to produce even against heavy odds. Sports coaches and military leaders understand this concept and take extra efforts to develop and maintain a high level of morale amongst their team members. History is replete with examples of underdog teams winning against incredible odds. The three hundred Spartans who gave their lives holding off a vast Persian army for seven days at the Pass of Thermopylae exhibited the highest order of morale in defence of their country.[1]
Morale cannot be taught
Execution can be taught to a willing group, but morale cannot. Morale, like reputation, takes time to develop and can be quickly lost. Entire books have been written on team morale, but let's review some situations I personally experienced that demonstrate the importance of a team's cohesion and trust in leadership.
I was once a sales rep for a company that changed its sales sample policy every few months. As reps, we never knew what to expect, and this put our sales process in jeopardy: we continually had to relearn how to operate within the company's new rules. This took time away from selling and degraded our sales efforts. We had little confidence in management, as we believed they did not know the business well enough to understand how disruptive this practice was. Worse, their actions indicated to us that management didn't care about the sales team. These inconsistent or frequently changed management policies damage morale in large part because they make it difficult for reps to anticipate the future. People like to believe their futures are secure, and actions by management that challenge that will degrade morale. Sales reps want to work for leaders who care about them and who keep unnecessary changes to a minimum. This company's sales sample policy struck out on both counts and was destructive to morale.
A different company I was a sales rep for reduced our rate of commission by 20 per cent with no notice or explanation. This not only placed a financial burden on the sales group but also signalled that the company disregarded the value of the service we were performing. Again, people want to work for companies and managers who appreciate them. When managers don't care, they damage team morale.
Measuring morale
Since morale is a state of mind, it is difficult to measure, but there are signposts that indicate the vitality of team spirit in an organisation. A sales team with high morale will, nine times out of ten, accomplish its objectives ahead of schedule and with minimal resources. Team members will arrive at meetings early and stay late. They will always be prepared in meetings and on sales calls. They will always look and act sharp. In difficult times, they will offer more positive suggestions than negative complaints. They are quick to help other team members without request of reward. In a nutshell, they are ideal employees; you can see it and feel it, and you enjoy their company.
While my point is not to marginalise execution, in the final analysis, morale nudges out execution nine times out of ten as the single most important factor that defines powerful sales organisations and places them above weak ones. Because morale cannot be defined with metrics, a large part of sales management is an art, not a science. Business is tough enough today without a negative, dissatisfied team. When we keep morale high, the work experience can be enjoyable. High-morale teams not only sell more effectively-they are much more fun to be around.
[1] However, see http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/ancienteurope/a/histmyths2.htm