After over 25 years in the sales and marketing arena working with a variety of clients and hundreds of sales and marketing management types, I’ve seen a lot of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to managing a sales force. Research on CRM over the past ten years has shown rather consistantly that roughly 50% of the initiatives fail. There are a number of reasons, of course. But my good friend and HR Performance & Training consultant, Cheryl Jankowski, shared with me her 5 Basic Reasons People Don’t Perform. They apply to sales people with specific responsibilities and just about everyone in any discipline.
Here they are:
1. People don’t know how to do what needs to be done.
This is a training issue that can be readily addressed. (Reason: Training)
2. People don’t want to.
This is an attitudenal issue addressed through identifying, training and
appropriate consequences and corrective actions. (Reason: Attitudenal)
3. People don’t know “what” to do.
This is a leadershp issue where roles and responsibilities need to be
clearly spelled out. (Reason: Leadership)
4. People cannot perform due to process barriers.
Organizational barriers don’t permit the performance. (Reason: Organizational)
5. People don’t have the ability.
Self explanatory. (Reason: Competency & Hiring)
There is often a lot of “finger pointing” and playing of the blame game in organizations when perfromance isn’t what it should be. I’ve noticed this often between sales and marketing departments. Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great”, identified traits that lead companies to great success. Two of those traits include being brutaly honest about all things, and stopping those things that aren’t working. In order to do that, it helps to understand what prevents people from performing successfully so you can make sure yours are. These 5 unique insights help do that. Of course, top management must be on board and lead the charge and change. Cheryl can help you develop programs to overcome these obstacles to performance and more.
My thanks to Cheryl for sharing. If you would like to learn more about Cheryl and her performance improvement services, click here.
